The General Department of Taxation (GDT) announced its 2018 plans and last year’s results on Wednesday, focusing on implementing revenue management solutions, reducing tax collection losses and managing arrears and value-added tax refunds.

Tax payers register at the Dan Phuong District Department of Taxation in Ha Noi. 

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told the GDT and representatives from the Ministry of Finance (MoF) during Wednesday’s conference to sharpen their antennae to detect remaining problems within the tax authorities.

The sector’s key challenge is to strive for a more effective implementation of State budget tasks, especially in meeting 2018 revenue and administrative reform goals assigned by the Government, said the PM.

Bui Van Nam, GDT’s General Director, said that his department has identified four key task groups and 20 corresponding measures, ensuring the PM that tax authorities will contribute effectively to this year’s State budget.

By the GDT’s calculation, 2017 tax revenue was more than VND1.01 quadrillion ($44.9 billion), surpassing the estimated goal by 5.2 per cent. Therefore, Nam said the 2018’s goal will be set to VND1.07 quadrillion ($47.6 billion).

The GDT completed 103,211 tax inspections in 2017, equivalent to 113 per cent of the yearly plan, recovering more than VND19.4 trillion ($848 million) in tax payments, equal to an 81.04 per cent increase in State budget revenue contribution, said Nam.

More than 7,000 enterprises will be subjected to tax inspections in 2018, he added.

Nguyen Dai Tri, GDT’s Deputy General Director, said tax departments nationwide had done their best to ensure the sector’s 2017 revenue and to modernise budget collection methods, especially in income tax declarations.

Tri also said 2017 witnessed dramatic changes in tax administrative reform. Electronic tax declaration systems were implemented in 63 provinces and cities’ tax offices, with nearly 624,000 tax-paying accounts registered in the system.

Furthermore, the GDT calculated that by the end of 2017, total remaining tax debt for Viet Nam was about VND73 trillion ($3.2 billion), down more than VND2 trillion ($89 million) year-on-year.

Regarding anti-tax loss measures and irrecoverable tax debts, General Tax Director Nam told the PM that last year, tax authorities collected more than VND44 trillion ($1.95 billion) in tax debt, some 59.5 per cent of leftover tax debt from 2016.

Nonetheless, Nam admitted that remaining uncollected tax debt at the end of 2017 exceeded VND73 trillion ($3.25 billion), accounting for 7 per cent of total tax revenue last year.

As such, in 2018, Nam said the sector will strive to keep tax debt below 5 per cent of collected annual tax revenue.

In terms of debt structure, the GDT asserted that most tax debt is irrecoverable, including administrative fines and late payments, mainly due to taxpayers’ economic difficulties.— VNS