The Ministry of Finance has just issued a document summarizing, explaining, and accepting comments on the proposal to develop a draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of 7 laws, including the Law on Tax Administration.

In which, the Ministry of Planning and Investment suggested considering and clarifying the appropriateness of the proposed amendment and supplement to Clause 2, Article 5 of the Law on Tax Administration, which stipulates the exemption of tax officials' responsibilities when they have correctly and fully complied with the regulations within the scope of the taxpayer's records and documents of competent state agencies in accordance with current legal provisions.

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Deploying electronic invoices cannot prevent fraud and invoice trading by businesses. Photo: Minh Ngoc.

The Ministry of Finance explained that although electronic invoices have been applied nationwide, many cases of buying and selling invoices with large tax amounts have still been discovered by the police. Deploying electronic invoices cannot prevent fraud and invoice trading by businesses, because tax authorities cannot determine whether the buying, selling, and import-export activities are real or not without checking and verifying, even though businesses have sent electronic invoices to tax authorities.

According to the Ministry of Finance, the law on tax administration has not clearly defined the responsibilities of tax officials in tax administration, affecting the psychology of tax officials when performing their duties, especially in the field of tax refunds.

Tax officials cannot control all data. Automated systems cannot control all the actual nature of transactions and tax fraud.

The tax authority does not have the function of investigation, so verifying the trading activities of taxpayers takes a lot of time and requires the coordination of many agencies and units such as commercial banks, transportation units, police, customs, etc.

“The handling of tax refund dossiers before inspection must have specific regulations on the responsibilities of tax authorities. Tax officers are only responsible for the information on the enterprise's dossier and the information provided by competent state agencies related to the handling of refund dossiers, and are not responsible when enterprises commit fraud in declaring and providing dishonest and inaccurate information, leading to the handling of tax refunds for enterprises not in accordance with regulations,” the Ministry of Finance stated its opinion.

In fact, many cases of invoice trading have been and are continuing to be detected and handled by authorities.

In early August 2024, the General Department of Taxation issued Official Dispatch No. 3385 on reviewing and handling illegal invoices to tax departments of provinces and centrally run cities and the Large Enterprise Tax Department.

The General Department of Taxation said it had received Judgment No. 115 dated December 29, 2023 of the People's Court of Phu Tho province on the results of the first-instance trial of the case of illegal trading of invoices occurring in Phu Tho province and many other provinces and cities across the country.

The court determined that from December 2020 to October 2022, Nguyen Minh Tu directly or through an intermediary used 637 companies acquired by Nguyen Minh Tu to illegally sell 1,025,712 value-added invoices to 88,053 units and organizations and established 6 financial companies to legalize payments through banks.

The General Department of Taxation requests tax departments to exploit electronic invoice data and collect paper invoices (if any) of companies in the above list of 637 companies to apply tax management measures according to regulations. In case taxpayers under the management of tax authorities are found to be using invoices of these companies to declare taxes, they will consider and handle taxes and invoices according to regulations.

Tax departments conduct reviews and have a general summary report on tax and invoice processing results for taxpayers who have used invoices from 637 companies, sending paper copies to the General Department of Taxation before December 31, 2024 (soft file to the address [email protected]).

The Ministry of Finance proposes to amend and supplement Clause 2, Article 5 of the Law on Tax Administration as follows:

“ Tax administration agencies and other State agencies assigned to manage tax collection shall carry out tax administration in accordance with the provisions of this Law and other relevant legal provisions, ensuring publicity, transparency, equality and ensuring the legitimate rights and interests of taxpayers”;

“Tax officials are responsible for handling tax records in accordance with their duties and responsibilities, complying with the provisions of the law on tax administration and relevant laws within the scope of records and documents provided by taxpayers, and information documents provided by competent state agencies related to handling tax records of taxpayers”.