|
New tax on rents could bankrupt industrial park developers
Industrial zone developers have asked the government to overturn a Ministry of Finance decision to impose a 28 percent tax on rental incomes with retrospective effect from last year.
They have called the new tax slapped by the ministry in a June dispatch “inconsistent and unreasonable.”
It affects developers of industrial, processing and economic zones and hi-tech parks.
Dispatch 7074 followed an earlier one in January that stated that land rents in industrial, processing and economic zones and hi-tech parks are exempt from tax.
In what came as a surprise to developers, tax offices in Ho Chi Minh City and neighboring Dong Nai Province asked them to pay back taxes on rents not with effect from last year as directed by the ministry but from 2004.
The reason for the demand is not known but Phap Luat (Law) newspaper quoted Huynh Ngoc Phien, CEO of Amata Company, as saying a tax official in Dong Nai said it is based on dispatch 7074.
Delegates at a meeting held earlier this month by the Ho Chi Minh City Export Processing and Industrial Zones Authority (HEPZA) Businesses Association (HBA) heard that developers face bankruptcy since they have to pay up to hundreds of billions of dong in back taxes.
Le Cong Binh, deputy director of Long Binh Industrial Zone in southern Dong Nai Province, said his company faces ruin.
The HBA has sent petitions to the prime minister and the ministries of finance and planning and investment to scrap the new tax.
Thanhnien
|
