Apply many measures to enforce tax debt

(Baonghean) - 72 trillion VND is the total tax debt accumulated nationwide up to the present time, accounting for 10% of the state budget revenue. Accordingly, the Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department is the unit with tax debt recorded by the centralized tax management program (TMS), with a debt of up to 23 trillion VND. The recorded number is like that, but in reality, this is a debt that is very difficult to recover.

According to the report of the General Department of Taxation, the task of collecting the State budget in 2015 assigned by the Party and the State to the tax system is 731,600 billion VND, of which revenue from crude oil is 93,000 billion VND, domestic revenue is 638,600 billion VND, land use fee revenue is 39,000 billion VND and domestic revenue minus land is 599,600 billion VND. In order to successfully complete the task of collecting the State budget in 2015, tax authorities at all levels have drastically and synchronously deployed many solutions and measures to manage revenue collection, exploit all sources of revenue to mobilize resources for the State budget. One of the measures that tax authorities have focused on implementing is inspection and examination to prevent State budget loss. Since December 2014, the General Department of Taxation has assigned the task of tax inspection and examination in 2015 to each Tax Department, ensuring that the number of enterprises inspected and examined reaches 15% of the number of operating enterprises. At the same time, it has directed the Tax Departments to focus on implementing solutions to prevent loss of State budget revenue.

Intensive collection of tax debts

Accordingly, the Tax sector focuses on inspection, examination, organizing the implementation of reviewing the developed plan, arranging, and promptly supplementing maximum resources for inspection and examination work; Organizing the assignment of specific tasks to each department, branch, group, and team in conjunction with encouragement, emulation, and rewards, striving to complete the 2015 State budget revenue estimate; while implementing the completion of the inspection and examination plan, focusing on strengthening risk management in high-risk fields and industries such as: VAT refund, invoice management, e-commerce, transfer pricing, etc.; organizing the monitoring and timely direction of the implementation of monthly and quarterly tax inspection and examination plan targets; grasping the payment relationship, the origin of payment currency, and the circulation of payment cash flow according to the guidance documents of the Ministry of Finance. From there, tax authorities at all levels have a list of enterprises with large tax arrears in localities.

Why is it so difficult to collect tax arrears, despite the efforts of the Tax Department? The leader of a local tax department said that the most important thing is that the production and business situation of enterprises is facing many difficulties, while the biggest difficulty is that enterprises depend too much on bank loans, but cannot borrow easily and in sufficient amounts. Therefore, although the late payment penalty interest of the Tax Department is very high, enterprises cannot borrow interest to pay tax debts. However, there are also many enterprises that are slow, deliberately misappropriating tax money, enterprises that have tax extensions but continue to not pay after the deadline, enterprises that stop operating, abscond and do not pay taxes.

The second reason is due to the limitations of the mechanism and policies. According to this leader, the Tax sector is lacking sanctions to be able to handle resolutely, some coercive measures such as asset seizure are not valid in practice when the assets of many enterprises with large, long-standing tax debts have been mortgaged or are of low value, or even non-existent, many enterprises have withdrawn from their business registration locations. However, it is easy to establish another enterprise because the Enterprise Law or the Tax Administration Law does not have any regulations on tax debtors not being allowed to establish new enterprises. Other coercive measures such as freezing accounts at the State Treasury and banks; coercion through third parties; asset seizure, stopping import and export procedures; suspending invoices and revoking business licenses (each step is 30 days apart) according to current regulations have not been effective in practice because coordination with the police, business registration, etc. is still loose and uncertain.

Re-apply exit ban

Based on practice, many local tax departments have proposed that the General Department of Taxation and the Ministry of Finance give their opinions on amending the laws related to tax debt collection. Among them, there are opinions that it is necessary to amend the Bankruptcy Law in the direction of allowing tax authorities to sue tax-indebted enterprises in court to declare bankruptcy; to request to prevent transactions of ownership transfer of assets of tax-indebted entities with the purpose of evading tax obligations. In particular, amend the legal regulations on entry and exit, putting the subjects who are leaders and capital contributors of enterprises with tax debt in the category of not being allowed to leave the country.

Recently, the Ministry of Finance announced a list of 600 enterprises with large tax debts, and has caused conflicting opinions. Notably, many opinions disagree with this approach, and some enterprises have "countersued" the Tax Department, because the information is not updated, causing more difficulties for enterprises, and the treatment between public agencies and enterprises is not transparent and proper. In addition, the lack of criteria and criteria for classifying enterprises (such as not specifying the tax debt limit, as long as there is debt, it is announced and named according to local zoning, not based on the amount of tax debt) has created inequality between enterprises with debts of tens or hundreds of millions of VND and enterprises with debts of tens of billions of VND.

According to the leader of the Ministry of Finance, the ministry has advised and submitted to the Prime Minister a decision to re-apply the coercive measure of banning exit from the country for those who have not fulfilled their tax obligations with quite detailed regulations on tax arrears and applicable subjects. In addition, the Ministry of Finance is determined to announce invoices that are no longer valid for units that are slow to pay tax debts.

Collecting state budget is the key task of tax authorities, therefore, in order to collect enough revenue according to the estimate and collect on time, in addition to propaganda, supporting taxpayers, removing difficulties for production and business activities, strengthening inspection, examination, and fighting against overdue debts is one of the key tasks. Publicizing the identity of tax-indebted enterprises is one of the quite effective solutions in recovering overdue debts. After announcing the identity, notifying that invoices are no longer valid, and prohibiting exit, if enterprises still procrastinate, tax authorities will continue with stronger measures, such as revoking tax codes, suspending the use of invoices; revoking business registration certificates, establishment and operation licenses. It is important that the Tax sector must do a good job of classifying enterprises, grasping the causes of tax debts, considering and proposing solutions for enterprises such as allowing gradual payment of tax debts for a maximum of 12 months, recommending competent authorities to create mechanisms and policies for enterprises to have capital to develop production and business, thereby increasing income, and at the same time having financial resources to pay tax debts.

Red River