Submit to the National Assembly to reduce VAT by 2% until the end of 2026, continue to exempt agricultural land tax until 2030

Proposal to continue reducing VAT by 2%

Presenting the Report on the National Assembly's draft Resolution on value-added tax reduction, Minister of Finance Nguyen Van Thang said that the promulgation aims to stimulate domestic consumption, support people and businesses, promote production, business, tourism, and domestic consumption; thereby contributing back to the budget and contributing to the effective implementation of socio-economic development plans for the 2021-2025 period, as well as creating growth momentum for the next period of 2026-2030.

According to the draft, the Government proposes to continue reducing the value added tax rate by 2% for groups of goods and services currently subject to a tax rate of 10% (to 8%), except for a number of fields: telecommunications, financial activities, banking, securities, insurance, real estate business, metal products, mining products (except coal), goods and services subject to special consumption tax (except gasoline). The proposed policy application period is from July 1, 2025 to December 31, 2026.

Presenting the Review Report, Chairman of the Economic and Financial Committee Phan Van Mai said that the majority of opinions in the Committee agreed with the Government's proposal on the scope and duration of the policy. Maintaining the tax reduction policy in the last 6 months of 2025 and the whole year of 2026 is considered to be consistent with the goal of supporting economic recovery, creating conditions for businesses to proactively plan production and business.

The Committee recommends that the Government continue to research, review, and supplement necessary contents to complete the draft Resolution before submitting it to the National Assembly for consideration and decision.

Extending the period of exemption from agricultural land use tax

At the meeting, Minister of Finance Nguyen Van Thang presented a Report on the draft Resolution of the National Assembly to extend the period of exemption from agricultural land use tax - a policy being implemented under Resolution No. 55/2010/QH12, which has been amended and supplemented in Resolution No. 28/2016/QH14 and Resolution No. 107/2020/QH14.

Accordingly, the draft Resolution proposes to continue exempting agricultural land use tax until December 31, 2030, in order to institutionalize the Party and State's major viewpoints and policies on "three rural areas": agriculture, farmers, and rural areas. Maintaining this policy does not reduce budget revenue because, in fact, this is a policy that has been and is being implemented. According to calculations, each year about 7,500 billion VND of agricultural land use tax is exempted.

The Economic and Financial Committee's review report shows that after more than 30 years of implementing the Law on Agricultural Land Use Tax, the tax exemption and reduction policy has been implemented for a long time through resolutions of the National Assembly. The Committee agrees with the Government's proposal to continue extending the tax exemption period until the end of 2030.

However, the Economic and Financial Committee also recommended a number of points to note, such as: proposing not to continue tax exemption for fallow land areas and land used for purposes other than agricultural production; periodically evaluating the effectiveness of the agricultural land use tax exemption policy, from the following aspects: impact on agricultural production, farmers' lives and land use efficiency.