At the meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee to give opinions on the draft Law on Small and Medium Enterprise Development, on August 28, Politburo Member, National Assembly Chairman Tran Thanh Man noted the reality that there are businesses in the style of "catching thieves with bare hands", registering to establish only to buy and sell invoices, documents and trade fraud.
Of course, the solution to this problem is not to create additional conditions when establishing a business because above all, the right to freedom of business needs to be guaranteed, and legitimate businesses must be facilitated.
If because of some cases of fraud, establishing businesses is only for the purpose of buying and selling fake invoices and tightening procedures for everyone, businesses that comply with the law will have to bear additional costs and encounter many difficulties.
The most important thing is still to improve the effectiveness of post-inspection work. Businesses with signs of substantive operations, issuing invoices with unusual scale, sudden revenue fluctuations or transactions that are not commensurate with the scale of operations need to be identified according to the risk management mechanism.
Data on electronic invoices, tax declarations and business operations are creating conditions for management agencies to strengthen supervision according to the level of risk, instead of widespread inspection.
This approach both detects abnormal signs early and limits causing serious trouble for businesses.
In particular, in this amendment of the Law on Small and Medium Enterprise Development, the State needs to clearly identify which businesses really need support.
If only based on the number of employees and revenue, businesses that already have financial potential and good markets can still be eligible for support.
At that time, the State's resources will be divided, and businesses that need more resources to invest, innovate and develop may not receive the necessary support.
Policies must correctly identify businesses that need support and have mechanisms for businesses to "graduate" when they have developed stably or continuously exceeded the threshold.
Support is for businesses to grow, not to become long-term incentives.
In the opposite direction, simplifying the tax calculation method for micro-enterprises and business households is a direction worth considering, especially for establishments with small scale and limited accounting and management capacity.
If the requirements for books and documents exceed the capacity of a restaurant or small store, compliance costs will increase and may become a barrier to legitimate business operations. The simpler and clearer the regulations, the easier it is for businesses to implement, and the more convenient it is for management agencies to control. However, simplification does not mean lax management, it is still necessary to prevent the fragmentation of operations, concealment of revenue or policy abuse.
Easy to join, easy to comply but difficult to profit are requirements to ensure a healthy business environment.
And that is also a way to protect genuine businesses, effectively use national resources and keep support policies from turning into profit opportunities for businesses that only exist on paper.
