'Fed up' with electronic invoices because they are expensive

The Ministry of Finance is drafting a Decree on invoices to expand the use of electronic invoices from 2018, but businesses are "afraid" of this type of invoice because it is too costly.

Worry about rising costs

As one of the enterprises implementing electronic invoices (E-invoices), at a recent workshop to gather opinions on the draft of E-invoices, a representative of Orient Commercial Joint Stock Bank (OCB) said that E-invoices help enterprises save on storage costs, printing costs and facilitate information and revenue management. However, according to the draft, from the beginning of 2018, E-invoices with tax authority authentication codes will cost 300 VND/sheet. With the number of invoices currently in use, it is estimated that each month the bank will spend an additional 300 million VND.

"The purpose of using electronic invoices is to help businesses save costs, but applying this regulation will cost businesses too much," he wondered. For this reason, the tax accountant of a bank with total assets of VND 260,000 billion calculated that the bank issues about 3 million invoices each month, and if the authentication code fee is applied on the invoice, it will incur costs of up to VND 900 million.

Many experts are concerned that the tax authority's technology infrastructure will be overloaded when businesses register to use electronic invoices.

Explaining the application of the fee of 300 VND/invoice, according to the Ministry of Finance, more than 90% of enterprises declare directly on the electronic information portal of the tax sector without having to pay a usage fee. This creates great pressure, so the information technology system of the General Department of Taxation must be regularly upgraded to meet the demand.

Providing electronic invoices with tax authority codes for free will also lead to a similar situation for the tax sector's information technology system. Another reason, according to this ministry, is that there are currently 8 enterprises providing value-added services for electronic transactions in the tax sector (called T-Van houses), but the activities of T-Van houses are very limited.

The free provision of the tax authority will make intermediary organizations providing e-invoice services inoperable because all businesses will choose to use it for free. Therefore, the Ministry of Finance proposed that both the tax authority and T-Van collect fees when providing e-invoice services with tax authority codes.

Overload capacity

In addition to the issue of fees, the hasty application of e-invoices makes experts worry that “haste makes waste”. Lawyer Tran Xoa, Director of Minh Dang Quang Law Firm, commented that within 7 years, the number of registrations for e-invoices was only a few thousand, so the draft's target of 400,000 enterprises switching from paper invoices to e-invoices is a problem.

Will the tax authority’s technology infrastructure be able to meet the demand when a large number of enterprises implement it simultaneously? Not to mention that there are only 3 months left until the end of 2017, and the decree has not been issued yet, so how can enterprises implement it? In addition, some issues arising in the process of using electronic invoices need to be clearly defined. For example, what invoices will enterprises use when transporting goods on the road so that when competent agencies such as market management inspect, they can recognize that they are not contraband?

Agreeing with the above viewpoint, Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Tuan, Vice President of Dong Nai Import-Export Association, said that it would be very difficult to convert all enterprises to use electronic invoices in a few months, so it needs to be implemented with a roadmap. According to the Law on Supporting Small and Medium Enterprises, tax and accounting procedures are simplified to adjust the conversion of business households into enterprises, reaching 1 million enterprises in 2020.

Meanwhile, these enterprises mostly use part-time accountants, many business owners are the ones who issue invoices, not accountants. When using electronic invoices, enterprises will have to buy accounting software to connect to use electronic invoices. Accounting software also has to be continuously upgraded, so enterprises have to charge maintenance fees.

Meanwhile, small and medium enterprises, especially micro enterprises, are still unfamiliar with e-invoices, so they need a transition period to get used to e-invoices. When they see the benefits, enterprises will boldly switch to it, but if they "force" the progress, it will be very difficult to achieve the goals in both quantity and quality.

According to Thanh Nien Newspaper