Regulations on invoices and documents cause businesses to increase costs

This is the notable content in the document that VCCI has just sent to the Ministry of Finance regarding comments on the Draft Decree related to regulations on invoices and documents.

In this comment document, VCCI pointed out many points that are disadvantageous to businesses.

According to the Draft, retail and chain food service establishments are not allowed to issue invoices at the end of the day but must issue invoices for each purchase from cash registers that have data connections with tax authorities.

However, according to businesses, this regulation greatly increases costs in initial investment as well as the process of maintaining systems and data.

Commenting on this regulation, VCCI noted that this will create great pressure on the retail trade and chain food service businesses.

supermarket 1.jpg — VCCI believes that the regulation of issuing invoices for each purchase instead of at the end of the day causes retail and service businesses to incur higher costs. (Photo: Anh Nguyen)

Regarding the regulation on issuing invoices for passenger transport businesses using taxis with fare calculation software, VCCI believes that the regulation on sending taxi invoice data to tax authorities after each trip, according to businesses' feedback, may lead to some difficulties in the implementation process.

For example, the cost of upgrading taxi companies' software increases, taxi drivers forget/have difficulty performing operations leading to traffic jams, etc.) At that time, businesses can be fined for transferring data at the wrong time.

Therefore, VCCI recommends that the Ministry of Finance reconsider the regulation, including assessing the impact on costs and benefits, and make amendments to facilitate business operations.

Regarding commercial discount invoices, the Draft stipulates that the discount amount created after the end of the discount program will be adjusted by invoice.

However, according to businesses, this regulation will create a huge amount of work because each adjustment invoice can only be applied to one invoice, while businesses can trade many items and have many different promotional programs, each program applied to each item.

This causes the number of invoices to increase significantly, causing costs and resources for the business. If one invoice is allowed to adjust multiple invoices, listing the list on the discount invoice will also create a burden for the business, and at the same time depend on whether the system can handle it or not.

In addition, in many cases, businesses can only determine whether customers meet the conditions at the end of the program, while invoices may arise in many declaration periods, which always requires adjusting the value-added tax declaration. This creates a discrepancy between accounting books and tax declaration data, making it difficult to control, especially for businesses that are required to disclose financial statements.

Therefore, VCCI recommends that the Ministry of Finance consider adding a principle allowing businesses to issue a discount invoice (not an adjustment invoice) and attach a list.

The draft stipulates that enterprises must issue tax invoices in the following cases: temporary export for re-import, temporary import for re-export of raw materials, finished products, machinery, tools, and equipment; export of goods in the form of loans, borrowings, or receiving returned goods.

However, VCCI said that according to the feedback of enterprises, this regulation is not appropriate. Because when carrying out the above activities, enterprises have to carry out customs procedures and issue commercial invoices according to regulations. This activity has been strictly controlled by customs agencies according to customs law.

At the same time, this activity is not a sales or service activity, and is not intended to generate profits or revenue in the Vietnamese market, but only to support export production activities.

At that time, the requirement to issue additional domestic tax invoices will create additional administrative procedures and increase the number of employees of the enterprise. Therefore, VCCI also suggested that the drafting agency remove this regulation.

Regarding the regulation that invoices must show the buyer's identification code, VCCI said that businesses consider it unfeasible because requiring buyers to declare information about the identification code will be a "blocking point", causing buyers to not want to get invoices because they do not want to declare this information.

Furthermore, the seller also has no mechanism to confirm whether the identification code provided by the buyer is correct or meets the conditions of "legal identification code and electronic authentication" to be displayed on the invoice.

This will pose risks to businesses when issuing invoices. Therefore, VCCI recommends that the drafting agency reconsider this regulation.

Proposal to remove the 30% ceiling on loan interest calculated into the costs of domestic enterprises The Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association (HoREA) proposed to amend Decree 132 to remove the 30% ceiling because it believes that this is unreasonable and has made the picture of investment, production and business activities of enterprises not be reflected honestly and promptly.

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