Vice Chairman of the National Assembly Nguyen Duc Hai chaired the meeting. Photo: National Assembly

Preventing revenue loss and gradually increasing domestic revenue

At the meeting on November 5, the National Assembly discussed on the Sate revenue collection and related contents.

Participating in the discussion, National Assembly deputies highly appreciated the efforts of the Government and ministries, branches and localities, in the state revenue collection. The state revenue is expected to increase by 10% and the estimate in 2025 raises 5%.

However, delegates suggested that it is necessary to ensure the structure and total expenditure for development investment under the ratio prescribed by the National Assembly.

According to delegates, reports from the Government and the State Audit have provided a lot of information, helping National Assembly delegates identify more clearly the quality of budget revenues as well as control budget expenditures.

Delegate Tran Hoang Ngan (HCMC delegation) suggested that there should be solutions to increase state revenue in the coming period, including anti-revenue loss in the field of e-commerce, prevention of waste in public assets, public land..., as well as pay attention to growth drivers in the State revenue and expenditure policies.

According to the delegate, in 2024, although the total state revenue exceeded the estimate by 10%, the revenue from the state-owned enterprise sector did not increase, or even decreased compared to the estimate, while the revenue from the foreign-invested sector and the private sector rose.

Therefore, policies need to be revised and improved to create conditions for state-owned enterprises to operate more effectively.

Delegate Nguyen Truc Son (Ben Tre delegation) suggests continuing to implement flexible fiscal and monetary policies to support businesses and people. Photo: National Assembly

Delegate Nguyen Truc Son (Ben Tre delegation) said that some localities have faced difficulties due to the impact of storm No.3, which need to be supported to restore production and business and contribute to increasing budget revenue.

Moreover, it is necessary to continue to flexibly implement fiscal and monetary policies to support enterprises greatly contributing to the State revenue as well as the real estate market, and energy projects, etc.

At the same time, it is necessary to focus on exploiting domestic revenue sources such as land use, lottery, in which it is necessary to soon complete related policies such as land price list, Law on Real Estate Business, Housing Law, Land Law, etc.

The delegate from Ben Tre also proposes the Government as well as ministries and branches to focus on guiding localities to have strong solutions to increase revenue, gradually going up the domestic revenue.

Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc gives a speech. Photo: National Assembly

AI tool to control revenue on e-commerce platforms will be launched

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc said that over the past four years, the Government has implemented extended fiscal policies and reduced taxes worth about VND 800,000 billion for people and businesses to promote economic recovery.

However, the State revenue over the past four years still exceeded about VND1 quadrillion, thereby investing in traffic projects, airports, infrastructure, and social security, etc.

Explaining the excess revenue, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister said that the collection methods of the Customs and Tax sectors have been shifted from the manual method to electronic collection method with the issuance of electronic invoices, lucky invoices, issuing invoices for each sale when trading gasoline, collecting revenue from cross-border e-commerce platforms, and real estate taxes, etc.

Regarding tax collection on e-commerce platforms, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance said that the Ministry of Finance has collected taxes from 102 foreign suppliers such as Facebook, Google... with a tax amount of VND18,600 billion.

As for domestic e-commerce platforms, currently, Hanoi city alone has collected about 35,000 VND billion.

In response to the National Assembly delegates' opinions on the difficulty of collecting land use fees, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Ho Duc Phoc said that in practice, this procedure is not complicated but only slow due to the slow determination of land prices.

When the land price has not been issued, the Tax man cannot issue invoices for collecting land use fees. Therefore, the land price determination process is difficult and is the key problem.

Additionally, land use fees account for 45% of the total tax debt of the whole country, which is considered bad debt, and the late payment penalty is many times higher than the principal debt.

However, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance said that although there have been recommendations, the revised the Land Law has not been implemented, creating “reverse thinking”, meaning that only when land is allocated, land fees are calculated, but when enterprises do not pay, then do business at a loss and go bankrupt, the land fees have not been paid back to the State.

Therefore, the provision needs to be resolved.