At the online seminar "Notes when reviewing risks of corporate income tax - value added tax - personal income tax settlement" in 2024 held on the morning of February 11, Ms. Le Thi Thuy, CEO of Bach Khoa Consulting Services Co., Ltd., said that in 2024, the General Department of Taxation has applied AI (artificial intelligence) to the activities of controlling electronic invoices and analyzing tax data of enterprises.

Through this, many invoices for the purchase and sale of the same item or product line were discovered but the units sold them at unusual prices. The tax authority requested to provide explanatory documents. If the unit does not have documents or does not provide an explanation, it will be put on the tax risk list. Any unit that uses invoices from units included in this list is also at risk.

“With the support of AI, the tax industry can analyze invoices up to F5, F7... Thanks to that, in 2024, the industry identified 79,000 businesses that had to be checked for invoices, over 4,400 businesses were no longer operating at the address, more than 501 businesses were investigated and collected more than 4,700 billion VND,” Ms. Thuy informed.

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Applying AI to electronic invoice control activities has helped the tax industry collect more than VND 4,700 billion in 2024. Photo: Nam Khanh

According to current regulations, legal invoices must ensure correct and complete form and content according to legal regulations. That is, invoices must meet the requirements of the General Department of Taxation on forms; invoice content must include full name of company, address, tax code, name of goods, unit, quantity, unit price...

In fact, there are many invoices at the time of purchase and sale of goods and services that are legal and have been settled, but are later excluded from tax deduction.

Discussing this story, Ms. Thuy said: “Many businesses buy and sell real goods, but at the beginning they do not sign contracts and invoices with the buyer, but instead sign with another party to legalize the documents.

A few years later, the units that signed the invoices were investigated by the police for buying and selling invoices or abandoning their business addresses, leading to the consequence that businesses that purchased goods were caught with illegal invoices and were not eligible to deduct input value-added tax.

According to Article 15 of Circular No. 210/2013 (amended in Circular No. 26/2015, Circular No. 173/2016), the two conditions for input VAT deduction include:

One is to have a legal value-added invoice for purchased goods and services or a document proving the payment of value-added tax at the import stage or a document proving the payment of value-added tax on behalf of foreign parties according to the guidance of the Ministry of Finance applicable to foreign organizations without Vietnamese legal status and foreign individuals doing business or having income arising in Vietnam.

Second, there is a non-cash payment document for purchased goods and services (including imported goods) worth VND 20 million or more.