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It’s not easy to reduce tax liabilities
The General Taxation Department (GDT) has decided to reduce the domestic tax liabilities. However, it has been warned that this would be not an easy task because of the current big difficulties in production and business.
The business circle has been making every effort to overcome the difficulties, while the taxation system has been making exertion to reduce the tax liabilities from 6.2 percent in 2011 to 4 percent.
GDT believes that this is “possible mission”, because in the last four years, despite the difficulties in the production and business operation of enterprises, the tax arrears still have decreased sharply from 9.5 percent in 2008 to 7.7 percent in 2009, 7.3 percent in 2010 and 6.2 percent in 2011.
While highly valuating the determination of the GDP, but Minister of Finance Do Hoang Anh Tuan has warned that the difficulties in 2012 would be even bigger than in 2011, and that with the anticipated number of enterprises to scale down production or halt business, the target proves to be very high.
Therefore, Tuan said that it would better to strive to a more modest goal – reducing the debts in tax to five percent, which is equal to that of 2010 and 2011.
Tuan has every reason to give that warning. Even the localities which are believed to well implement the tax management, such as Hanoi, HCM City, Binh Dinh, Hai Duong, also find it very difficult to reduce the tax arrears.
According to the Binh Dinh provincial tax agency, in 2011, though the tax agency applied a lot of coercive measures, by October 31, 2011, the time for the corporate income tax finalization for the third quarter of 2011, the accounts receivable had reached 118.32 billion dong, an increase of 53 percent over the beginning of the year.
Nguyen Dinh Duong, Head of the Binh Dinh provincial taxation department, said that it is very difficult to collect tax now, because businesses, which are facing big difficulties, do not have money to pay. Besides, businesses cannot pay tax because they cannot get money from the construction projects funded by the state budget or the government bonds. The projects have been delayed, while the disbursement has stopped under the policy to cut down the public investment to curb the inflation rate.
The Hai Duong provincial tax agency also said it has applied a lot of measures to urge businesses pay tax. Especially, the names of businesses which deliberately delay the tax payment may be published on mass media, or their accounts at banks may be blocked. The drastic measures allowed the taxation agency to collect 90 percent of the tax sum carried forward from 2010 (278 billion dong). However, by October 31, 2010, the debts receivable still had reached 496 billion dong.
Meanwhile, Nguyen Thi Thu Huong, Director of the HCM City Customs Agency, said on VnExpress that in the current difficulties, as businesses find it difficult to access bank loans, they deliberately delay the tax payment, so that they can have capital to serve their business projects.
The GDT is now managing 35 state owned big economic groups, general corporations and many non-state big enterprises, such as Toyota Vietnam and Honda Vietnam, which pay up to 206 trillion dong to the state budget, accounting for 38.5 percent of the domestic receipts. As for the enterprises, the tax collection proves to be more satisfactory.
According to the Big Enterprise Tax Management of GDT, by October 31, 2011, the unpaid tax sum of the enterprises had been only 1.16 percent of the sum to be receivable, an increase of 0.16 percent over the beginning of the year. However, the fixed tax of the 35 big enterprises is relatively high, estimated at 2066 billion dong.
vietnamnet
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