Warning of illegal e-invoice trading tricks

	Prevent and handle sale of e-invoices on social networks
	Cases of illegal invoice trading detected
	Use of e-invoices generated from cash registers expanded

Conference scene. Photo: T.D

That is the information given by the delegates at the scientific conference "Tax management and taxpayer compliance from implementing electronic invoices" held by the Ministry of Finance on July 6 in Ho Chi Minh City.

Speaking at the seminar, Mr. Do Van Truong, Director of the School of Fostering Finance Officers (Ministry of Finance) said that nowadays, electronic invoices (E-Invoices) are increasingly used in commercial transactions and become an inevitable trend in the context of strong application of information technology, bringing many benefits to businesses and state management agencies. On that basis, over the past time, the Ministry of Finance has promoted the application of e-invoices according to a roadmap consisting of two phases: phase 1 from November 2021 with 6 provinces and cities (including Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Hai Phong, Quang Ninh, Binh Dinh, and Phu Tho); Phase 2 from April 2022 with the remaining 57 localities.

According to Mr. Truong, after more than a year of implementation, the e-invoice system with outstanding features has solved most of the problems of effective tax management, facilitating production, and business activities. As of May 2023, tax authorities have received and processed more than 3.91 billion e-invoices.

However, in the process of applying for e-invoices, taxpayers encountered a number of problems and difficulties such as incorrect invoice status, and inadequate adjustment procedures; in some business areas with different types of invoice issuance, there are problems that need to be resolved in the course of implementation; regulations on electronic transactions are still complicated and there is no complete ecosystem; The process and instructions for implementing e-invoices of tax authorities are still incomplete, many businesses are still confused and have problems when applying, etc.

Notably, there is currently a phenomenon of illegal issuance and use of e-invoices for tax fraud and appropriation of the State budget. At the same time, the compliance of taxpayers is also affected by factors such as small and medium enterprises, business households are not ready to access e-invoices due to limited information technology infrastructure conditions, human resources; habit of using traditional invoices; fear of change or concern about software providers; safety and security issues when using on the internet environment, etc.

Information on illegal invoice trading tricks, Ms. Ha Thai Hanh, Deputy Head of Taxpayer Support and Propaganda Department, Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department said that subjects use the citizen IDs of individuals who had lost/stolen, hire an uninformed person as a legal representative, etc to establish an enterprise, business chain or acquire an existing business for business registration.

The above businesses often do not have fixed assets, rent an office space for many companies, only hang signs but do not operate, and use fake papers and signatures to perform all transactions; selling invoices to entities that are businesses or organizations that need to be legal for input costs for smuggled or floating goods or goods that require documents to prove the origin: soil, stone, sand, gravel, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, seafood, petroleum, food, etc or to appropriate VAT refund.

The business system performs the act of buying and selling invoices, going around, the intermediary businesses all declare input and output VAT fully and do not generate or generate very little VAT and payable CIT. Enterprises make false declarations of input invoices for legalization, without generating payable VAT and payable CIT.

For enterprises with large sales revenue but inadequate warehouses or no warehouses, no expenses for renting warehouses, or enterprises with many lines of business, the number of goods shown on the purchase and sale invoices is untimely, and disproportionate, leading to negative goods (there are no goods in the warehouse but still makeup invoices for selling goods). These subjects often declare to cancel sales invoices and replace or adjust with sales invoices in the next period. The reasons for this cancellation or adjustment are not clear and not realistic.

In order to detect cases of illegal purchase and sale of invoices early, it is necessary for the synchronous participation of the authorities. On the part of the tax authorities, the tax sector has promoted the management of invoices based on the results of risk analysis according to the evaluation criteria to identify high-risk taxpayers. Accordingly, taxpayers that have many signs of suspicion of fraud in the use of high-risk invoices will be examined and inspected.

Along with the inspection and examination, the tax sector also strengthens the information comparison between the taxpayer data in the tax declaration file and the e-invoice data that the taxpayer has created to produce a list of taxpayers that have discrepancies between records and data, ensuring correct and complete declaration, without delaying tax payment time.

Tax authorities also carry out the functions of controlling e-invoice information, and checking early warning signs to help identify cases that need regular monitoring and inspection. Moving to early prevention, far from the short export of e-invoices, there will be warnings to taxpayers about irregularities or mutations compared with normal business activities, in the use of invoices as soon as taxpayers issue invoices. This will be done on a daily basis to prevent the taxpayer's invoice issuance with signs of risk.