New registration fee causes 'shock' for luxury cars

Luxury cars were most affected after the Ministry of Finance imposed a new registration fee schedule for 177 types of cars and motorbikes. Most notably, the Lamborghini Aventador S supercar has the highest registration fee of 40 billion VND. In addition, there are a number of car models with registration fees of over 10 billion VND from the Porsche, Range Rover, and Maserati brands.

Luxury cars are greatly affected by the adjustment of registration tax. Photo: Internet

Luxury car registration fees up to billions of dong

On October 18, the leader of a car import business (Gia Lam, Long Bien District, Hanoi) said: "Yesterday, I just sold a Range Rover. Previously, the registration fee for this car was more than 400 million VND, but a few days ago, I had a family matter and didn't pay attention, so I agreed to sell it to the customer at the old price. However, on October 17, when I checked again, the fee had increased to 560 million VND, an increase of 160 million VND/car."

“This Range Rover has a total import tax of 135,000 USD, and when it arrives at the port, the price has increased to 165,000 USD. Due to the high import price and the decrease in demand for cars, the business has to accept selling at a loss to recover capital. Therefore, imposing a higher registration tax will make business more and more difficult,” the car showroom owner lamented.

For cars with 9 seats or less: Lamborghini Aventador S has the highest registration fee of up to 40 billion VND; Lexus GX460 Luxury: 5.35 billion VND; Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 313CDI is 802 million VND.

In the list of domestically produced motorbikes, Honda Lead has a registration fee of 37.5-39.3 million VND, depending on the version, Honda Wave125i is 39.5 million VND. For Yamaha, the Ministry of Finance has added 7 more types, including Jupiter (113.7 cm3 engine capacity) which previously had a tax price of 24.8-28.9 million VND/unit, now it is 27.4-28.9 million VND/unit (depending on the version). For Piaggio, Vespa (124.5 cm3) has a registration fee of 82.8 million VND/unit and Vespa (278.3 cm3) has a price of 112.9 million VND/unit.

According to businesses, this increase in registration fees has caused automobile businesses, especially those importing luxury cars, to fall into a difficult situation in the context of a sluggish automobile market.

Preventing price fraud in calculating taxes and fees

Regarding this issue, the representative of the General Department of Taxation explained: The periodic adjustment of the price for calculating registration fees for cars and motorbikes by the Ministry of Finance is to ensure that the price for calculating registration fees is close to the transaction price of cars and motorbikes on the market; to ensure price equality in calculating registration fees for car models between car manufacturers.

According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Cuc, Chairwoman of the Vietnam Tax Consulting Association, this adjustment is in line with the actual situation because the actual selling price of some products is much higher than the price stated on the invoice. This not only causes loss of revenue for the state budget but also makes the market lack transparency.

“I once bought a car with an actual value of 500 million VND but the invoice only stated 350 million VND. Therefore, it is very necessary to set a specific price range for some car models to serve as a basis for calculating registration fees in a unified manner,” said Ms. Cuc.

A representative of CHC Tax Consulting Company Limited said: Adjusting the price of registration fees for some types of goods such as cars and motorbikes will contribute to increasing the State budget revenue, limiting the use of private vehicles, avoiding traffic jams, and reducing environmental pollution. Because in many cases of car sales, the seller and buyer will agree to record the invoice value lower than the actual transaction value to be paid. The purpose is to reduce the amount of registration fees to be paid. With the issuance of the price framework of the Ministry of Finance, this will be minimized", Ms. Hue said.

According to Minh Phuong/baotintuc