The Ministry of Finance has revised seven laws to help remove difficulties, obstacles, and bottlenecks in production and business activities, and promote growth. In the photo: Production activities at the factory of PEGA Electric Vehicle Joint Stock Company. Illustration: HOAI ANH

Timely remove difficulties, obstacles, and bottlenecks

In the latest meeting of Steering Committee on reviewing and handling difficulties in legal document system, the Prime Minister has approved the drafting of a new law to amend seven existing financial laws. This is aimed at addressing urgent issues and improving the business environment. The changes will help streamline procedures, reduce bureaucracy, and promote economic growth while controlling inflation.

Following the Prime Minister's directive, the Ministry of Finance has conducted a thorough review of the implementation of laws that it has drafted. The review found that there are difficulties and challenges in the implementation of seven laws. Consequently, the Ministry of Finance is developing a draft law to amend certain provisions of these seven laws, including the Law on the State Budget, the Law on Management and Use of Public Property, the Law on National Reserves, the Accounting Law, the Law on Independent Auditing, the Securities Law, and the Tax Law.

According to the Ministry of Finance, the amendment of the provisions in the above 7 Laws aims to promote decentralization and delegation of power in the development of mechanisms, policies, laws, planning, inspection and supervision; promote the simplification of administrative procedures; eliminate the request-grant mechanism; unblock and effectively use all resources for development, taking public investment and State resources as the guide and activating all other legal resources. The amendment of the 7 Laws also aims to improve the investment and business environment; remove obstacles in policies and mechanisms, improve the effectiveness of management, and strengthen public service responsibilities to ensure fairness, equality, transparency and consistency in the system of legal documents.

According to the Ministry of Finance, the amendment of the 7 Laws also creates resources for socio-economic development through expanding the collection base, preventing tax losses, especially e-commerce activities and business based on digital platforms; Modernize tax management, promote digital transformation and electronic invoices to best serve taxpayers' tax obligations and create momentum for economic growth.

Amend and supplement many important contents

According to the draft law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the seven laws, for the provisions of the State Budget Law, the Ministry of Finance proposes to amend and supplement 7 articles, including provisions allowing the use of local budgets to support the central budget, support other localities to implement or participate in investment projects of the central budget in the locality, especially projects of a regional and inter-regional nature; supplementing the expenditure tasks of local budgets with aid expenditures; supplementing expenditures for programs and projects outside the medium-term public investment plan; supplementing the content of assigning the Government and People's Committees to organize the implementation of the budget estimates in accordance with the law for development investment expenditure estimates and regular expenditures that have not been detailed at the beginning of the year. In addition, supplementing the expenditure task of supporting interest rates in investment, supporting state capital for economic organizations, compensating for interest rate differences, management fees, and entrusting loans through policy banks to implement socio-economic policies at the locality.

Also in the draft law, the Ministry of Finance proposes to amend and supplement 13 Articles of the Tax Law, including provisions on tax management principles; modernization of tax administration; duties, powers, and responsibilities of ministries, ministerial-level agencies, and government agencies; rights of taxpayers; principles of tax declaration and calculation; handling of late tax payments; fulfillment of tax obligations in case of exit; deadline for resolving tax refund dossiers; authority to decide on tax refunds; principles for establishing, managing, and using electronic invoices; responsibilities of organizations and individuals involved in providing taxpayer information; cases of forced execution of administrative decisions on tax management; measures for forced execution of administrative decisions on tax management.

For the provisions of the Securities Law, in the draft law, a series of important issues are proposed by the Ministry of Finance to amend and supplement such as: regulations on professional securities investors; prohibited acts in securities activities and the securities market; conditions for public offering of securities; cancellation of public offering of securities; private placement of securities by public companies, securities companies, and securities investment fund management companies; public companies; regulations on public companies; rights and obligations of Vietnam Securities Depository. In the draft law, the Ministry of Finance proposes to amend and supplement the Law on Management and Use of Public Property with regulations on the decentralization of decision-making authority in the management, use, and disposal of public assets, regulations on the application of law between the Law on Management and Use of Public Property and other laws.