In 2020, the Customs sector determined to enhance the inspection for key goods and enterprises at risk of tax revenue loss and remove inspections for goods and enterprises at low risk.This is an important measure to prevent State budget revenue loss.

Customs officers of Huu Nghi Border Gate Customs Branch
(Lang Son Customs Department) inspect imported goods. Photo: H.Nu

Inspecting key items

The General Department of Customs has regularly issued a list of items at risk of customs value as the basis for customs units to classify dossiers for customs value inspection as soon as enterprises carry out import and export procedures, thereby identifying cases of inaccurate declarations of customs value andensuring tax revenue for the State budget.

Accordingly, the Customs sector has actively developed a list of Vietnamese import and export goods in compliance with the List of Harmonized System Codes (HS) and List of ASEAN Harmonized Tariff Nomenclature (AHTN), in which, amending, updating and specifying criteria to classify easily-confused goods in order to avoid fraud in declarations and determination of codes; built a list of import-export goods at risk of goods classification and applied tax rates such as: checking the classification for easily-confused goods to prevent undervalued declarations; controlling the use of C/O to apply tax rates prescribed in the Special Preferential Import Tariff to prevent abuse of the C/O to enjoy preferential tax rates.

At the same time, the General Department of Customs has conducted customs value inspections according to seven specialized topics for items including exported minerals, alcohol, aluminum, fibers, imported mechanical nuts and exported iron ore.

The General Department of Customs has also actively built a centralized management database for looking up and unification in classification; regularly reviewed the tax codes and tax rates declared by enterprises on the centralized management database to detect fraud in the declaration of tax codes and rates and to impose tax and ensure tax revenue.

One of the solutions set out and effectively implemented nationwide by the Customs sector is to focus on inspecting goods codes and customs value for goods showing signs of risk and post-clearance inspections for enterprises at high risk.

Since the beginning of the year, the post-customs clearance inspection force has conducted 1,161 inspections, including 346 inspections at the headquarters of customs declarants and 815 inspections at the headquarters of the customs agency and with the imposed tax and fines of VND931.34 billion, of which actual remittance to the State budget was VND870.71 billion.

Regarding inspectionsin the first 10 months of the year, the whole sector conducted 200 inspections, including 29 specialized inspections and 171 internal inspections with imposed tax arrears and fines of more than VND73.90 billion, of which the actual remittance to the State budget was more than VND91.4 billion (including accumulated revenues in 2019).

In the first 10 months of the year, the customs sectorremitted about VND1,975 billion to the State budget thanks to applying anti-revenue loss measures (such as revenue from tax debts, revenue from post-customs clearance inspection, anti-smuggling, and anti-revenue loss through re-determination of goods codes and values).

To achieve the above results, the General Department of Customs has thoroughly applied information technology (IT) in the customs inspection, supervision and control process; coordinated with competent forces and local governments to drastically implement solutions set out at the beginning of the year.

Drastic solutions

In order to gain State revenue at the highest level, the General Department of Customs has requiredits units to continue to improve the system of documents guiding the determination and declaration of customs value for imported and exported goods; regularly organized professional training and retraining programs for customs officers and enterprises in the field of customs value; enhanced IT application and information exchange among domestic management agencies, collecting and verifying information on goods value from other customs administrations.

Strengthened post-customs clearance inspection, specialized inspection, focusing on great-value and high-tax rate goods, imported goods by enterprises from questionable markets; goods in discounted and under-valued declaration; goods subject to special preferential tax rates, tax exemption, tax refund; and goods declared in the wrong customs regime to apply for tax liquidity.

In addition, the General Department of Customs has also appliedindirect price consultation through the IT system to the import and export goods of enterprises at low risk and applied one-time consultation and used the results of multiple consultations forenterprises that regular import and export goods towards gradually reducing items subject to inspection and price consultation upon customs clearance and moving to inspection by enterprise and topic; and promoted risk management to identify goods and enterprises at risk of customs value.