At the 2024 Tax - Customs Forum held on the afternoon of October 16 in Hanoi, Associate Professor, Dr. Le Xuan Truong, Head of the Tax and Customs Department - Academy of Finance shared: The tax management system in Vietnam is in its second generation, businesses and people are allowed to self-declare and pay taxes based on the application of information technology - electronic tax declaration (with the first generation tax management system, the tax authority calculates taxes and notifies taxpayers manually).

However, taxpayers still want more changes to facilitate the tax declaration/payment process.

Mr. Truong cited: “Recently talking to me, a lecturer at the Academy of Finance suggested that the tax industry review the regulation requiring taxpayers to submit personal income tax returns. Because the tax industry's system already has all the data, including personal tax codes. The tax industry only needs to generate a notification, taxpayers can check it themselves, see that the data is correct, then click agree and that's it.”

Tax Reform.jpg
Experts and businesses expressed their desire to soon have a fully automated tax management system. Photo: Binh Minh

According to Mr. Truong, the world is starting to move towards a third tax management system, where taxpayers no longer have to declare taxes, but the technology application system will automatically calculate based on the integration of the whole society.

“Taxpayers can choose the automatic tax payment method, on the registered date, the bank will automatically deduct, no fear of forgetting leading to late payment. With such a real tax calculation system, of course, it is related to legal reform, only when the law allows it can it be done. Along with that, investing in infrastructure, machinery and equipment is very important. Without money, nothing can be done,” Mr. Truong further analyzed.

Acknowledging the efforts of the Tax sector, Dr. To Hoai Nam, Permanent Vice President and General Secretary of the Vietnam Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, expressed his hope that in the near future there will be a fully automated tax system, ensuring that when businesses enter information into the system, any errors will be promptly detected and handled immediately so that those errors do not cause any more major problems for businesses.

“How to have a system where everything is accurate and errors are detected immediately. If we can create such a system, we will minimize inspections and checks, which often cause trouble and pressure for businesses,” Mr. Nam emphasized.

Mr. Vu Le Huy, Deputy Director of the General Department of Taxation's Information Technology Department, said: After more than 15 years of implementation, more than 100 million electronic tax declarations and more than 50 million electronic tax payment transactions of enterprises have been sent to tax authorities.

From July 2022, all businesses, organizations and individuals using invoices will switch to using electronic invoices. Through the General Department of Taxation's Electronic Information Portal, sellers and buyers can look up all their purchase and sale invoices to control their production and business processes. To date, the General Department of Taxation's electronic invoice system has received and processed more than 9.9 billion invoices.

The Electronic Information Portal for Foreign Suppliers has supported 110 foreign suppliers (from many countries such as the US, Singapore, Ireland, UK,...) to register, declare and pay taxes; the total tax paid in 2024 is 6,234 billion VND.

Currently, there are 407 e-commerce platforms sending information to tax authorities via the E-commerce Information Receiving Portal.