More than 4,800 businesses owe approximately 1,900 billion VND in taxes

According to the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, the total overdue tax debt at the unit as of March 14, 2024 is nearly 1,900 billion VND, of more than 4,800 enterprises, of which more than 400 enterprises have a debt of over 1 billion VND.

Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department said that the total overdue tax debt at the unit as of mid-March 2024 was nearly 1,900 billion VND, from more than 4,800 enterprises. Of these, more than 400 enterprises had a debt of over 1 billion VND. The debt that can be collected is over 234 billion VND.

The amount of newly arising debt in 2023 that still needs to be recovered is more than 195 billion VND from 300 businesses.

Notably, of the 4,800 enterprises with tax debts at the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, more than 1,800 enterprises are no longer operating at their registered business addresses or have ceased operations (equivalent to more than VND 1,300 billion in debt); nearly 200 enterprises have had their Business Registration Certificates revoked (equivalent to more than VND 400 billion in debt).

According to the assessment of the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, the outstanding tax debt figures are due to many reasons. The objective reason is that the debts have arisen for a long time, before the enforcement measures under the Tax Administration Law were applied; the subjective reason is that some cases of tax debts due to lack of information lead to slow and untimely application of enforcement measures; some cases have not been monitored and urged to collect debts in a timely manner...

In 2024, the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department was assigned a state budget revenue estimate of VND 130,800 billion. To complete the assigned estimate, one of the solutions the unit focuses on is tax debt collection.

To continue to effectively implement the work of collecting tax arrears, the leaders of the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department directed units to immediately implement measures to urge debt collection.

Specifically, urge the collection of tax arrears, with solutions such as: issuing tax debt notices, sending invitations to businesses to work at the Customs agency, verifying the address and business operation status in the locality...; verifying necessary information to implement enforcement measures, including: bank account information, business operation status and legal status, tracking down the legal representative of the tax-debt business...

For the bad debts out of the total debt of 1,650 billion VND of more than 3,800 enterprises, the Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department is classifying and handling them according to regulations.

Among them, there are debts arising from 1994 and 1995 of enterprises operating in the field of processing and export production, with large debts.

For example, at the Investment Goods Customs Branch, there are 184 enterprises with tax debts that are difficult to collect, with a total debt of over 417 billion VND; at the Processing Goods Customs Branch, there are 334 enterprises with a total debt of over 166 billion VND...

In addition, the amount of tax debt that is difficult to collect arising from post-clearance inspection is also quite large, with a total debt of nearly 115 billion VND of 67 enterprises.

To handle the difficult-to-recover debts, Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department directed units to base on the actual debt situation, determine the remaining work to be done, and develop a detailed tax debt handling plan at the unit.

For debts that have been incurred for more than 10 years, the plan must focus on classifying files with large debt amounts, meeting the conditions for debt settlement, and completing files to implement debt freezing and cancellation.

According to the General Department of Customs, as of February 29, 2024, the total tax debt of the entire customs sector was VND 5,437 billion, an increase of VND 54.5 billion compared to December 31, 2023. The amount of debt cleared as of the end of January 2024 was VND 1,209.41 billion, unchanged compared to December 31, 2023.

The General Department of Customs has assigned the target of collecting and handling overdue tax debts by at least 2024 to 27 provincial and municipal Customs Departments and the Post-clearance Inspection Department.

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