Sticking to the plan and goal of tax system reform until 2030

Scene of the seminar. Photo: T.L

Expanding revenue sources

Speaking at the seminar, Mrs. Le Thi Chinh, Deputy Director of the Department of Reform and Modernization, General Department of Taxation, said that the overall goal of the Tax System Reform Strategy to 2030 was to continue to perfect the tax policy system associated with restructuring state budget revenues in the direction of covering all revenue sources, expanding revenue sources; minimize the integration of social policies in tax legislation and policies on tax exemption and reduction, ensuring tax neutrality.

Another important goal was to build a modern, streamlined, efficient and effective tax industry in Vietnam. The management of taxes, fees and charges is uniform, transparent, intensive and professional according to risk management methods, promoting IT application, simplifying administrative procedures, and reducing compliance costs for people and businesses.

Regarding the scale of revenue collection from taxes and fees, it must ensure maintaining the mobilization rate into the state budget at a stable, reasonable level and in line with the socio-economic development plan strategy in the 2021-2025 period. In particular, in the first phase, it would focus on supporting businesses and people to overcome difficulties and restore production and business due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

For example, the average mobilization rate into the state budget is not lower than 16% of GDP, of which the rate of mobilization from taxes and fees is about 13-14% of GDP; the proportion of domestic revenue in the total state budget revenue is to reach about 85-86% by 2025.

Regarding tax administration, the goal of the tax sector is to comprehensively modernize tax administration, in line with international practices and Vietnamese laws, focusing on tax administration institutions, tax resources, human resources and IT. For example, tax administration institutions must be synchronous, public, transparent and fair, apply risk management in tax administration, facilitate taxpayers to comply voluntarily, tax authorities have sufficient and efficient tax management capacity; a team of professional, in-depth and integrity tax officials; integrated and centralized IT system, meeting processing requirements, providing information for tax administration, direction and administration of tax authorities, and providing electronic and digital services to taxpayers.

Regarding the management institution, the goal of the Tax System Development Strategy is that the tax administration institution is perfected to simplify administrative procedures, and promote IT application in order to reduce the tax compliance costs of the people and businesses; at the same time, creating a legal basis for building a modern, professional, effective, efficient, and competent Vietnamese tax authority in order to implement and manage the reform objectives and contents as proposed. The tax sector strived to achieve 100% of the Law on Tax Administration and its guiding documents and related legal documents will be supplemented or promulgated according to the plan by 2030.

In terms of organizational structure and human resource development, the objective is to organize the apparatus with sufficient powers and capacity to enforce tax laws following the model of combining functional tax administration with tax management by the object, appropriate with the application of electronic tax and risk management method in the tax authority towards automation; the structure of the modern and streamlined tax agency system will be applied from the central to local levels which is appropriate with the requirements of centralized tax management to improve the operational efficiency of the tax authorities.

Furthermore, building a team of professional, integrity and innovative tax officials and employees with sufficient professional qualifications, political courage, and professional ethics to meet the standards of job title, job position and competency framework following the regulations with reasonable structure; Focusing on high-quality human resources, a team of senior experts with high professional experience, meet modern tax management requirements and in line with the trend of international integration.

Develop an effective and practical action plan

Speaking at the seminar, Mr. Dau Anh Tuan, Deputy General Secretary of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said that the tax sector has been very persistent in dialogue with businesses not only at the national level but also at the local level.

"Not many industries have such a "culture" of regular dialogue. Through these dialogues, many difficulties of enterprises have been recognized and many problems have been removed," Mr. Dau Anh Tuan said.

According to Mr. Tuan, one of the highlights in the past two years of the pandemic from the perspective of businesses is the business support policies. Accordingly, many policies on tax reduction, extension and postponement have been issued. After being surveyed, businesses all highly appreciated the impact of these support policies. This was a mark showing the timeliness in business support.

As for the tax system development strategy, a representative of VCCI said that each reform of the tax sector, whether it was large or small, it had a larger and larger impact than other sectors. Therefore, these reform goals were expected to be implemented more strongly to meet the Prime Minister's expectation on how to upgrade Vietnam's business environment, towards creating maximum conditions for businesses and people.

At the seminar, Director General of Taxation Cao Anh Tuan said that the time of implementing the tax system reform strategy still had a long way to go for the next 10 years. In the context of the economic situation, pandemic and geopolitics in the world, there were many unpredictable fluctuations, affecting the domestic economy and the implementation of political tasks of the Tax sector; significant impact on the implementation of the goals and targets set out in the strategy. Therefore, the development of an action plan to implement the strategy must be effective and practical in order to achieve and exceed the goals and targets set out.

The Director General of Taxation has assigned tasks to each unit. Accordingly, the Reform and Modernization Board continues to study and complete the action plan to deploy the strategy in order to ensure its effectiveness and efficiency; complete the Tax System Reform Plan to 2025 and the Projects on Implementation of the Tax System Reform Strategy to 2030. Furthermore, advising the General Department to coordinate with the Organisation and Personnel Department of the Ministry of Finance to submit to the Ministry of Finance to issue the Decision on establishing a Steering Committee for the implementation of the Ministerial-level Strategy.

At the same time, cooperating with the Organization and Personnel Department of the General Department of Taxation to advise and direct the establishment of a Steering Committee for Strategy implementation at the General Department and Tax Department levels, ensuring that the organization and implementation of the strategy is unified, transparent and systematic.

Mr. Cao Anh Tuan also requested the heads of departments and units to stick to the goals and targets set out in the Strategy related to the functions and tasks of their units to develop a 5-year plan and roadmap to contribute to the accomplishment of the objectives in the Strategy.