Fake goods are rampant on e-commerce platforms
Reporting to Lao Dong Newspaper, a representative of H.A Cosmetics Company Limited said that currently, there are many booths on e-commerce sites such as Shopee, Lazada, Tiktok shop... selling counterfeit goods of the company's products. Including 2 exclusive products: rat repellent essential oil and Asa Ratpel barley repellent essential oil.
Mr. Bui Ngoc Hung - Permanent Deputy Director of H.A Cosmetics Company Limited said that as of December 2024, through inspection, 14 stores of e-commerce platforms selling counterfeit products of the company were discovered.
The company has directly contacted a number of stores, requesting to stop selling counterfeit and fake goods, but not cooperating, and even "advertising" fake products as a challenge to the law.
The company has sent 3 official dispatches to e-commerce platform management companies for support, but has not yet received any response.
"The act of buying and selling counterfeit goods seriously affects the reputation and image of the company's products. These behaviors cause misunderstandings and harm consumers - when buying fake, poor quality products. The consequences lead to consumers turning their backs on genuine products, causing damage to businesses," said Mr. Hung.
How to manage?
The Department of E-commerce and Digital Economy (Ministry of Industry and Trade) said that Vietnam is one of the 10 countries with the world's leading e-commerce growth rate. In 2024, the scale of the e-commerce market will exceed 25 billion USD, an increase of 20% compared to 2023.
However, the number of violations handled regarding counterfeit goods, counterfeit goods, and unfair competition also increased by 2.4 times, the fine increased nearly 3 times, of which about 30,000 online business individuals violated taxes.
Fake goods, counterfeit goods, poor quality goods and unprofessional attitudes of shop owners are probably the "bad experiences" that many online shoppers have encountered when shopping online.
On today's e-commerce platforms, information about sellers is mainly provided by them, from phone numbers, emails to personal documents such as ID cards.
The reliability of this information is very low, because sellers can create fake accounts, borrow documents from relatives to avoid handling measures by the platform or authorities when an incident occurs. This reality has created an unsafe and vulnerable trading environment.
In the draft dossier of the Decree on tax management for business on e-commerce platforms, the Ministry of Finance said that there are about 300,000 individuals selling goods on more than 400 exchanges, according to data provided by the parties to the tax authorities. The tax paid by this group last year was about VND2,500 billion.
In addition to the above figure, according to the operator, a large number of stalls on commercial platforms have not yet identified sellers. Statistics alone at 5 major e-commerce platforms (Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, Sendo, Grab) have more than 300,000 stalls that have not yet identified users. The estimated business revenue of this group is about over VND 70,000 billion.
The Ministry of Finance estimates that with the tax rate that households and individuals doing online business will pay for these two types of tax at a total of 1.5% of the total revenue of about VND 70,000 billion, the estimated tax revenue is about VND 1,000 billion.
However, the tax revenue from this business household and individual is very low. The tax collected only accounts for about 20% of the market revenue. According to the Ministry of Finance, this shows that many businesses have not declared and paid taxes according to regulations.
Mr. Nguyen Binh Minh - Head of the Resource Development Department of the Vietnam E-commerce Association said that in the past, to facilitate the development of e-commerce, management agencies and platforms only required sellers to have email addresses, declare store names, and types of goods to be able to trade.
This leads many people to use accounts with "virtual" identities to open many stalls to divide orders to avoid taxes, livestream to sell goods without tax control or sell fake, poor quality goods...
"Not only is there a loss of tax revenue, if online sellers are not identified soon, buyers will be skeptical when transacting on the platform, leading to a decrease in e-commerce growth rate," Mr. Minh warned.
