Strong digital transformation in tax management

	Customs sector implements policies on tax collection and management effectively
	Tax compliance management in the digital economy
	Many tax management solutions for e-commerce

Officials of the Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department answer questions from businesses about tax finalization at an online conference on March 27, 2024. Photo: T. Diu

Efforts to develop IT applications to serve taxpayers

According to the General Department of Taxation, with the motto "taxpayer-centric approach", the Tax industry always strives to develop IT applications to serve taxpayers' in tax declaration and payment as well as other applications in tax management, ensuring the most favorable conditions for people and businesses, meeting the needs of electronicization and digital transformation of the Finance sector, towards national digital transformation.

To achieve the "dual goal" of both completing revenue estimates and ensuring support for businesses to develop production and business and economic growth, in 2024, the Tax industry has continued to synchronously implement revenue management solutions, focusing on promoting digital transformation such as applying big data analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) to serve tax and invoice management, contributing to controlling and detecting invoice fraud. Along with that, the Tax industry has strongly deployed the construction of digital map data for business households nationwide; promoted digital transformation in state management of e-commerce activities, business activities on digital platforms, and cross-border business; continued to improve database construction to serve the implementation of taxpayer support programs; researched and implement automatic information provision.

In recent years, the Tax industry has deployed, continuously developed, and promoted IT applications, provided electronic services, met the deployment of all online public services of the industry, expanded many more features and utilities to support taxpayers. The highlight is the successful implementation of the Electronic Tax Declaration System (formerly the iHTKK Online Tax Declaration system launched in 2009); electronic tax payment service; electronic tax refund. These electronic tax services are provided on a single platform system, the Electronic Tax Service System (eTax), enable taxpayers to carry out administrative procedures quickly and conveniently. The electronic tax system provides services for more than 920,000 businesses and tens of millions of individuals and business households to access and use regularly.

Continuing to research tax management measures for newly arising economic activities

According to Director General of the General Department of Taxation Mai Xuan Thanh, the Tax industry is implementing the Tax Industry Reform and Modernization Strategy until 2030. This is a necessary task in the context of the strong reform and digital transformation so that the Tax industry maintain its leading position in IT reform and application in the Finance sector.

Also according to General Director Mai Xuan Thanh, digital transformation is part of the reform and modernization work. The digital transformation work has a very important role and position and is implemented strongly in the Tax industry with the goal of closely following the Government's national digital transformation program, helping the Tax industry move faster and meet the needs of the common objective of the Government as well as the Ministry of Finance.

Towards building an increasingly modern Tax industry, the Tax industry has deployed the centralized electronic tax management system TMS; risk management application in classifying tax refund applications; database analysis and electronic invoice management system; digital map of business households; electronic connection with other state management agencies. Systems and applications are always updated and upgraded to improve the efficiency of tax management and enhance the provision of high-quality electronic tax services for taxpayers.

Mr. Dang Ngoc Minh, Deputy Director General of the General Department of Taxation, said that in order for the reform and modernization of the tax system to be carried out in a unified way of awareness and action from central to local levels, the Tax industry has focused on implementing four key contents in the reform and modernization of the Tax industry in 2024. Accordingly, the Tax industry has attached the modernization of tax management with digital transformation programs and plans of the Tax industry; developed orientations for amending tax policies and management to meet the requirements of the Tax Industry reform and digital transformation strategy; reformed the management of officials performing public duties, organizational structure and improvement of the quality of human resources in the Tax agency; applied a set of indicators to evaluate tax management efficiency and monitor the implementation of the tax reform strategy.

Deputy Director General Dang Ngoc Minh also emphasized that the Tax agency needs to continue to research and seek tax management measures for newly arising and non-traditional economic activities in the context of the digital economy with e-commerce activities, cross-border transactions, digital services, or operating models such as sharing economy, platform economy connecting activities because these are huge challenges for tax authorities to keep up with the development of the economy.