On November 28, the National Assembly listened to Chairman of the Finance and Budget Committee Le Quang Manh report on the examination of the National Assembly's draft Resolution on VAT reduction.
According to Mr. Le Quang Manh, the majority of opinions in the Finance and Budget Committee agreed with the necessity of issuing a Resolution to continue applying the VAT reduction policy.
Tax reduction contributes to reducing costs and prices of goods and services, thereby stimulating consumption, maintaining jobs for workers, supporting people and businesses to continue to maintain recovery momentum and promote production and business activities to contribute back to the state budget and the economy.
However, some opinions disagree with the continued application of the VAT reduction policy and argue that the VAT reduction policy has been issued and implemented since 2022 in the context of businesses and people facing many difficulties due to the COVID pandemic.
The issuance and implementation of VAT reduction policies should only be considered a temporary solution for a certain period of time to support people and businesses.
Now that the pandemic has ended for a long time, tax incentive policies issued to support businesses and people to overcome difficulties after the pandemic need to be reviewed to narrow the scope of application, gradually stabilizing the implementation of tax policies.
Therefore, it is not really appropriate to continue to propose and implement a VAT reduction policy. At the same time, the National Assembly passed Resolution No. 159/2024/QH15 on the state budget estimate for 2025.
Therefore, the expected impact of reducing state budget revenue by about VND 26.1 trillion from the implementation of the VAT reduction policy but not yet taken into account in the 2025 state budget estimate may affect the assurance of revenue estimates and state budget deficit in 2025.
There are opinions suggesting that it is necessary to deduct the revenue reduction due to policy application from the total budget revenue for localities because in the past, the implementation of policies without adjusting the revenue estimate has led to imbalances in budget revenue and expenditure in localities.
Regarding the form of policy issuance, the Review Committee proposed to continue applying the form of resolution on this content in the General Resolution of the session, similar to the resolutions that have been issued.
“The majority of opinions in the Committee agreed with the Government's proposal to continue allowing the policy to be applied from January 1, 2025 to June 30, 2025,” said Mr. Le Quang Manh.
Immediately after listening to the presentation and the verification report, the National Assembly discussed in the hall the draft Resolution on VAT reduction.
Agreeing with the content proposed by the Government, some delegates still have concerns about the discontinuity and fairness of the policy, as well as the impact on the budget, especially the local budget.
