|
MOF plans to lower PIT on income from securities investments
The Ministry of Finance is going to submit to the National Assembly the plan to reduce the personal income tax (PIT) imposed on the earnings from securities investments.
Taxation does not please securities investors
The currently applied five percent tax imposed on dividends clearly is not applauded by securities investors. Especially, the overly high tax rate has discouraged investors in the context of the lackluster market, and prompted investors to run away from the market.
Analysts have also pointed out that the source of revenue from taxing securities investors, just counts as a small proportion in the total state’s budget collection, especially when the liquidity on the stock market remains weak.
The problem is that while securities investors have to pay tax on dividends, depositors do not have to pay tax on the interests they get from dong, gold or foreign currency deposits. This has made securities investors think that there exists a discriminatory treatment among investors.
Huynh Anh Tuan, General Director of SJC Securities Company, said that he does not think the PIT reduction on dividends would help heat up the frozen stock market, but he still thinks that it is necessary to adjust the tax rate in order to ensure the equality for securities investors.
“Necessary policies need to be applied to remove the discriminatory treatment,” he said.
Sharing the same view, Pham Linh, General Director of International Securities Company, said that the amendments of unreasonable policies, including the adjustment of the dividend PIT will help restore investor confidence, while confidence proves to be the most important thing in the development of the stock market in Vietnam.
New way of taxation proposed
Besides the PIT on dividends, securities investors also have to pay PIT when making transactions in the stock market, even when they take loss.
In fact, under the PIT Law, securities investors can choose one of the two methods of calculating tax.
With the first method, securities investors have to pay 0.1 percent of the sale prices right after every transaction. Meanwhile, with the second method, they have to pay 25 percent on the profits they make from securities investments during one year (The tax finalization is carried out at the end of year).
However, it is really very difficult to apply the second method (Taxing 25 percent on the total profits), because it is unfeasible to define the total sale prices and total purchase prices of investors. A lot of investors do not keep documents about the transactions to show to tax officers.
Meanwhile, it is nearly impossible to define the sale and the purchase prices, if securities investors make transactions on the OTC market.
Therefore, most investors accept to pay tax in accordance with the first method. However, the problem is that in this case, even the investors who take loss with their transactions, still have to pay tax. According to Tien phong, though there are no official statistics, it is clear that the number of profitable investors is very modest, because the market remains very gloomy.
In order to settle the problem, the Vietnam Association of Financial Investors (VAFI) has suggested a new taxation method, under which the securities transfer tax will be calculated one day after securities make transactions, while securities companies will collect the tax immediately after securities make profits.
However, experts have pointed out that the suggested taxation method still also cannot define the business profits in the most exact way.
Meanwhile, as for the transactions on OTC market, VAFI believes that the current method should still be applied.
vietnamnet, Tien phong
|
