Legal document newsletter week 10/08/2024

STRENGTHENING TAX MANAGEMENT FOR E-COMMERCE ACTIVITIES

The e-commerce market in Vietnam is expanding and diversifying in terms of operating models and participants, with the growth considered to be the fastest in Southeast Asia. At the same time, this also poses new and significant challenges for tax administration.

On 23 July 2024, the General Department of Taxation has recently issued the Official Dispatch No. 3153/TCT-DNNCN on strengthening tax management for e-commerce activities to the Tax Departments of provinces and centrally-controlled cities.

Accordingly, to continue effective tax management for e-commerce activities, ensure active mobilization of resources for the state budget, and complete budget collection tasks in the coming years, the General Department of Taxation Request the Tax Departments of provinces and cities the following specific tasks:

  1. Strengthen propaganda work for organizations and individuals participating in e-commerce business activities, livestream sales, and business on digital platforms, through synchronous implementation of propaganda forms such as: propaganda on mass media (newspapers, radio, television, …); organize tax policy training conferences; organize direct dialogue with taxpayers; send an open letter from the Tax Authority to organizations and individuals participating in e-commerce activities; arrange personnel, set up separate phone numbers and emails to collect information on tax issues, support taxpayers in fulfilling tax obligations, thereby improving understanding, awareness and self-discipline in compliance Tax regulations of taxpayers.
  2. Focus on reviewing, regularly updating and enriching the e-commerce database to have enough input information for tax management.
  3. Actively exploit the e-commerce database that has been operated by the General Department of Taxation and decentralized to localities from data sources: information provided by the e-commerce platform, information collected through tax inspection, information collected from Internet serving tax management for e-commerce activities.
  4. Assign departments and personnel to classify tax subjects into the review list according to management requirements. Send the annoucements to organizations and individuals on the review list about fulfilling tax declaration and payment obligations according to regulations for e-commerce business activities.
  5. Proactively develop plans, advise the People’s Committees of provinces and centrally-run cities, propose plans and solutions to coordinate with relevant departments, commercial banks, and telecommunications enterprises to obtain complete and timely information of organizations and individuals with e-commerce business activities; coordinate handling of violations in cases of non-compliance with tax regulations.
  6. Strengthen control of e-invoices in tax management, direct Divisions, Sub-Departments and related departments to request businesses to strictly implement electronic invoice issuance, ensuring 100% of transactions, Including e-commerce transactions that are fully recorded and issued with electronic invoices.
  7. Strengthen inspection and examination of businesses in the field of e-commerce and businesses operating on digital platforms (owners of e-commerce trading platforms, shipping units, payment agencies, agents of foreign suppliers without permanent establishments in Vietnam, advertising media units, …).
  8. Seriously implement the reporting regime according to the guiding documents of the General Department of Taxation to ensure completeness, timeliness and punctuality.

In addition, the General Department of Taxation also said that in the coming time, the General Department of Taxation will continue to coordinate with relevant ministries and functional agencies to deploy a number of key solutions to strengthen tax management for e-commerce activities.