Pressure behind tax obligations
The Ministry of Finance is seeking opinions on a proposal to reduce 30% personal income tax for households and individual businesses and 30% corporate income tax for businesses with revenue of up to 10 billion VND/year. Many business households assess this as positive support, and at the same time hope to continue to simplify procedures and reduce tax compliance costs.
Ms. Le Huyen - a grocery business household in Cau Giay (Hanoi) - believes that tax reduction helps reduce financial burdens, but software costs, invoices and procedures are still significant. According to her, it is necessary to continue to simplify regulations, reduce compliance costs and error risks so that business households can feel secure in investing and expanding operations.
Similarly, Mr. Thanh Tung - owner of a food and beverage business household in Tay Ho, Hanoi - analyzed that the pressure comes not only from taxes but also from social insurance costs, invoice software and accounting. According to him, it is necessary to continue to simplify procedures, reduce compliance costs and limit error risks so that business households can operate with peace of mind.
Reduce the burden of compliance for taxpayers
The pressures reflected by business households are also issues that tax experts pay attention to when evaluating the effectiveness of taxpayer support policies.
From the practice of consulting and supporting taxpayers, Ms. Le Yen - Director of Hanoi Tax Consulting Co., Ltd. (Hanoitax) - said that besides tax exemption and reduction policies, it is necessary to prioritize reducing compliance costs, limiting breakthroughs in management obligations, handling overlaps in the law, and at the same time improving the stability, unity and predictability of policies.
According to Ms. Yen, although the number of procedures may have decreased, the cost to perform correctly, correct mistakes and prevent risks is still large.
Compliance costs are not only tax money but also include accounting - tax personnel, software, electronic invoices, digital signatures, declaration time, finalization, explanation, data storage and even procedures to be carried out even if no tax obligations arise. These are almost fixed costs, creating great pressure on business households, micro enterprises and newly established enterprises.
Regarding e-commerce activities, Ms. Yen shared that businesses and household businesses selling goods through the exchange must issue invoices for a very large number of retail transactions, while the exchange has fully stored data on orders, payments, refunds, service fees and cash flow.
According to Ms. Yen, issuing invoices for each transaction increases personnel costs, software and processing time but does not significantly increase transparency. She proposed to allow daily summary invoices for retail transactions on the exchange when buyers do not require separate invoices, and at the same time compare with transaction data and cash flow.
Increasing the stability and predictability of policies
Besides the cost of carrying out procedures, Ms. Yen said that a large but little measured cost is the uncertainty of policies. Regulations can change quickly, a content with many understandings, and guidance between localities is not unified, making it difficult for businesses to predict whether dossiers will be accepted or not.
More worryingly, after many years, businesses may be applied different understandings to recover, fine and calculate late payment interest. This not only causes financial damage but also forces businesses to maintain an unofficial "tax risk provision", reluctant to make long-term investments and scale expansion.
Tax reform should therefore not only be assessed by the number of procedures reduced or the amount of tax exempted or reduced, but it is necessary to consider the time, actual costs saved by taxpayers, the ease of implementation of policies as well as the ability to predict and control risks.
Sharing the same view, Mr. Le Van Tuan - Director of Keytas Tax Accounting Co., Ltd. - said that recently, some policies lacked adaptation stages, the policy life cycle was too short, affecting stability as well as forecasting ability when applied in practice.
When policies are difficult to forecast, implementers must increase contingency costs, thereby increasing compliance costs. Therefore, it is important to ensure stability, consistency and forecasting capacity of policies" - Mr. Tuan emphasized.
