Don't let the water reach your feet...

(Baonghean) - “Waiting until the water reaches your feet to jump” is a bad habit and there are still many people who have this habit. The story of a citizen living in Vinh City who bought an electric motorbike, but due to delay, encountered difficulties in the registration process and sent a petition to Nghe An Newspaper at the end of July 2016 is an example…

Mr. NT, residing in Ward H, Vinh City, is the person who submitted a petition to Nghe An Newspaper. The petition stated that in July 2016, his family wanted to buy an electric motorbike at store K for 14.5 million VND for their child to go to school. At the time of purchase, he asked, “Does this motorbike need to be registered?” The store owner replied, “Don’t worry, if there is a government policy in the future, we will take care of everything for our customers.”

He decided to buy the car and was given a warranty card (without stamp) and a sales invoice (without VAT invoice). Hesitant, Mr. NT asked about the Certificate of Technical Safety and Environmental Protection (ATKT and BVMT) but the owner said it was not necessary.

When the state had regulations on electric motorbike registration, Mr. NT was instructed to go to the Vinh City Tax Department to pay the registration fee. At the tax office, he was asked to provide a Certificate of Technical Safety and Environmental Protection. Because he could not present the papers, the payment of the registration fee had to be temporarily suspended. Mr. NT went to the store where he bought the motorbike to ask, but the owner replied that "there is no such document, if you want to sue, go ahead and sue".

Electric motorbikes are currently a popular means of transport chosen by students and high school students.

In response to this incident, Mr. NT looked up the regulations and learned the following information: If you register an electric motorbike before June 30, 2016, you do not have to pay registration fees; if you register after this date, you must have all the necessary documents; and if the electric motorbike is not registered when in circulation, you will be fined...

When approaching store K to verify the content of Mr. NT's petition, the matter was not like that. The representative here confirmed that Mr. NT bought a Grant 133 electric motorbike at the store, but the time of purchase was July 6, 2014.

According to the representative, store K is an agent of Detech Automobile and Motorcycle Company Limited (headquartered in Pho Noi Industrial Park, Hung Yen province). This company is a domestic vehicle manufacturer and assembler, so all products when leaving the factory to dealers nationwide have full documents according to regulations (invoices, warranty cards, ATKT and BVMT certificates); and when customers buy vehicles, the stores are responsible for delivering full documents.

Presenting the sales invoice dated July 6, 2014 showing the purchase of Mr. NT's vehicle as proof, the representative of store K said: "Mr. T's information about buying the vehicle in July 2016 is incorrect. At this time, everyone knows that electric motorbikes will be fined when they are in circulation without registration. If the vehicle does not have complete documents, customers will never buy it. The incident happened because Mr. T was very stressed at first, no matter how we explained it, it was useless. Recently, Mr. T's wife came with a gentle attitude, asking the store to help her get the vehicle safety and environmental protection certificate reissued. With her explanation, we took the vehicle's chassis number and engine number and sent them to the company to get the documents back and instructed the family to register according to regulations...".

Looking into the relevant regulations, the information on electric motorbike registration is exactly as the representative of store K discussed. With the sales invoice that store K kept; the contradictions in "questions" and "answers" shown in the application, it can be seen that Mr. NT has unsatisfactory recommendations. And the confirmed reason is that Mr. NT is indifferent and delays in registering the electric motorbike.

According to Mr. Nguyen Viet Hung - Deputy Head of the Tax Department, by July 28, 2016, 226 electric motorbikes were declared and paid for. Of these, 10 motorbikes had a value of 8 - 10 million VND; 39 motorbikes had a value of 10 - 12 million VND; 177 motorbikes had a value of 12 - 15 million VND. However, on the invoice, the motorbike sellers only wrote the amount equal to 1/2 or 1/3 of the actual amount collected from the customers. Faced with this reality, tax officials had to spend a lot of time to propagate the tax evasion behavior of motorbike sellers so that they could confirm the actual amount paid.

Mr. Nguyen Viet Hung said: “When implementing a new regulation, it is inevitable that some problems will arise. Regarding this, we have also recommended that the Tax Department and relevant agencies advise the Provincial People's Committee to promptly issue a minimum price list for calculating registration fees for electric motorbikes…”.

Through research, it is known that in universities, colleges, intermediate schools and high schools in Vinh city, the number of unregistered electric motorbikes is still the majority. This proves that the majority of electric motorbike users are still very indifferent to registering according to regulations. Hopefully, relevant authorities will pay more attention to propaganda work; on the part of electric motorbike users, do not wait until "the water reaches your feet to jump" and then have an "incident" like Mr. NT's family!

Ha Giang