More than 8,000 enterprises in HCM City are closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Financial units of HCM City are trying to support enterprises to recover production, minimise operation stopping and bankruptcy.

Supporting and facilitating activities are always concerned by HCM City Customs.
In the photo, the leader of the high-tech zone Customs Branch (HCM City Customs)
talks with the leader of Intel VN Co., Ltd. Photo: T.H 

Do not let enterprises go bankrupt

At a meeting held by the Party Committee of HCM City last week, Party Committee Secretary of HCM City Nguyen Thien Nhan said that the disease had left a profound impact on many industries, sectors and enterprises are facing great risk of bankruptcy, so the city should support enterprises to maintain operations to avoid closing. Currently in HCM City, there are about 8,000suspended enterprises due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, HCM City plans to strive to support up to 90% by September 2020, but a number of enterprises being supported money(for business owners, for workers) needs more detailed information.

From this reality, directing the tasks that need to be implemented from now to the end of the year, Party Committee Secretary of HCM City Nguyen Thien Nhan suggested enterprises should be supported to maintain operations and restore production and business.

According to Le Duy Minh, Director of Taxation Department of HCM City, many enterprises and business individuals had to temporarily close or operate perfunctorily. According to statistics of the Tax Department of HCM City there are currently 255,904 enterprises, organisations and 43,778 business households, individuals in the city subject to the extension of tax payments according to Decree 41/2020/ND-CP. For business individuals with turnover of less than 100 million VND in taxation per year which were temporarily suspended in accordance with Resolution 42/NQ-CP, the expected number of supported assistance is about 47,561 people. As of July 1, the unit had received applications for tax extension of 41,498 enterprises, business individuals and households, the total amount of tax proposed to be extended is 13,002 billion VND.

Regarding coordination with People's Committees of urban districts, rural districts, People's Committees of wards, communes and townships to support business people with tax revenue of less than 100 million VND per year suspended temporarily under Resolution 42/NQ-CP of the Government, Taxation Department of HCM City has received 2,216 requests for assistance submitted by business people individuals and 2,061 documents sent by the People's Committees of wards and communes. Currently The Tax authority has appraised 1,704 records, of which 1,239 are eligible for support and 465 are not eligible for support.

Nourish revenue

Political tasks, especially budget collection tasks of both Tax and Customs agencies in the second half of the year, pose many challenges. These units are implementing many solutions to support enterprises to recover production and business and nourish the revenue of the State budget.

According to Le Duy Minh, Director of Taxation Department of HCM City, in addition to tax delineating, the unit has performed tax debt rescheduling and tax debt remission for enterprises. Implementing Resolution 94/2019/QH14, the Taxation Department of HCM City always follows the guidelines of the Ministry of Finance and the General Department of Taxation to focus on directing and guiding units to review, consolidate and complete documents to classify difficult-to-collect debts for delineating tax arrears, writing off fines for late payment fines and late payment interest to promptly deploy after the resolution takes effect on July 1, 2020.Accordingly, Taxation Department of HCM City has assigned specific targets to each debt management official to ensure fulfillment of legal procedures to complete and consolidate debt delineating, debt elimination documents at the request of the decree. According to the statistics of HCM City Taxation Department of HCM City, the number of taxpayers which are delineated and eliminated debt is 278,158 cases, amount of deferred tax cleared is 3,092 billion VND and amount of delineated debt is 5,117 billion VND.

To support taxpayers, in the second half of the year, the unit continues to propose tax-related policies for People's Committee of HCM City to propose policies to support enterprises and business individuals in the future and at the same time continue to coordinate with departments, agencies in the area, with People's Committees of districts to implement measures to support enterprises, households and business people facing difficulties due to the Covid-19 disease.

Besides, Taxation Department of HCM City will strengthen the application of IT in transactions with taxpayers like electronic tax declaration, electronic tax payment, electronic tax refund, electronic invoice, electronic tax declaration and payment with renting houses, registration fees for cars and motorcycles, personal income tax on real estate transfer. Continue to maintain email inboxes for information between tax authorities and enterprises, and timely guide new tax policies, information problems of enterprises.

Regarding customs operations, Customs Department of HCM City has applied IT in the professional stages to create the most favorable conditions for enterprises. In the first six months of 2020, the Customs of HCM City has cleared customs procedures for goods worth more than US$50 billion, collect 43,906 billion VND, reaching 38.19% of the draft ordinance(115,000 billion VND),reaching 36.30% of the target (121,000 billion VND) and down 18.10% compared to the same period in 2019.In the second half of the year, the unit continues to deploy urgent tasks and solutions to overcome difficulties, assisting enterprises in solving difficulties, gradually restoring and reconstructing import-export investment, production and business activities. At the same time, promoting customs reform and modernisation at all stages of customs management, IT application deployment with missing operations; improve automation of professional processes, expand IT applications in fields related to State management of Customs for processed goods, export production and customs supervision at seaports