Use electronic invoices properly

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Tax administration needs to be carried out in a digital technology environment. Photo: General Department of Taxation

Invoice is a special document, both to record the transaction of selling goods and providing services between the seller and the buyer, reflecting the transaction volume of the economy, and as a document to serve as a basis for accounting and determining the tax obligations of taxpayers.

Therefore, voluntary compliance in the use of invoices by people and businesses is the premise for building a healthy business environment, and is the initial evidence of compliance with tax policies and laws.

From the time of e-invoice implementation to July 19, 2024, the number of e-invoices received and processed by tax authorities is estimated at 8.54 billion. To date, 75,429 businesses nationwide have registered to use e-invoices generated from cash registers, with more than 648.1 million e-invoices generated from cash registers.

This result is a remarkable achievement of the tax sector, but it also requires tax management to be carried out in a digital technology application environment to be able to process large data on electronic invoices, combined with voluntary compliance of taxpayers to fulfill tax obligations to the State budget.

Recently, through the database from the electronic invoice system, the tax authority has increased the electronicization of review and management measures in the use of electronic invoices through analyzing and synthesizing purchase/sale data on invoices, thereby detecting violations of invoices leading to violations of false declaration, tax evasion, and tax refund requests that are not in accordance with actual production and business activities in order to profit from tax money from the State budget...

Most tax violations are detected because taxpayers cannot explain that the declared and paid taxes are consistent with actual production and business activities due to signs of using illegal invoices or using invoices illegally. Therefore, tax authorities need to apply appropriate tax management measures such as tax inspection, tax audit, enforcement of tax administrative decisions, etc. to ensure against loss of State budget revenue.

Therefore, to prove that the tax declared and paid is correct, shorten the time for tax refund, and avoid tax law violations, the first thing taxpayers need to do is to use electronic invoices in accordance with regulations. The more transparent the transaction of buying and selling goods and services is, the faster the benefits from the State Budget will be realized.

Compliance with the law on invoices is transparency in the purchase and sale of goods.

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Compliance with the law on invoices is to make the taxpayer's purchase and sale transactions transparent. Illustration photo: Internet

The 2013 Constitution stipulates that “Everyone has the obligation to pay taxes according to the law.”

According to the current regulations of the Law on Tax Administration on the method of "self-declaration and self-payment of taxes", taxpayers shall base on the provisions of tax law to determine the types of taxes payable; self-calculate taxes, self-declare, self-pay the calculated tax amount to the State budget, and be responsible for the declared data. Tax declarations are used by taxpayers to declare information to determine the amount of tax payable.

For value added tax (VAT), to determine the amount of tax payable, the purchase and sale invoices will be one of the evidences reflecting the purchase and sale activities of the taxpayer during the tax period if the purchase and sale of goods and services is real; at the same time, if the purchase and sale of goods and services is not real, the use of the invoice made by the taxpayer is illegal and will be handled according to regulations.

For input VAT deduction, the important condition to prove the deductible input VAT is to have a legal VAT invoice for purchased goods and services and to have non-cash payment documents for purchased goods and services worth VND20 million or more.

Regarding VAT refund, VAT refund is the state budget returning the input tax amount to enterprises and organizations that have paid when purchasing goods and services for production and business. Therefore, a legal VAT invoice is one of the evidences showing that the amount of input tax that the taxpayer has paid to the state budget and will be refunded quickly.

For expenses deductible when determining taxable income for corporate income tax, enterprises are allowed to deduct all expenses if they meet the following conditions:

+ Actual expenses incurred related to the production and business activities of the enterprise;

+ Expenses have sufficient invoices and legal documents according to the provisions of law.

+ Expenses if there is an invoice for purchasing goods or services each time with a value of 20 million VND or more (price includes VAT) when paying must have a non-cash payment document.

Therefore, by strictly complying with the law on invoices, especially the regulation "When selling goods or providing services, the seller must issue an invoice to the buyer", along with non-cash payments when purchasing goods and services, thereby declaring and paying taxes correctly for purchasing and selling activities, taxpayers have made the transaction of buying and selling goods and services transparent, speeding up the progress of tax refund dossiers, avoiding falling into the list of risks requiring tax inspection and examination.

Quoc Tuan