The Tax sector is ready for response scenarios in implementing collection tasks for the whole year of 2023. Photo: TL.

Many pressures on the budget revenue in 2023

In 2023, the estimate of state budget revenue (state budget) of the Tax sector assigned by the National Assembly and the Government is VND 1,373,244 billion, of which revenue from crude oil is VND 42,000 billion; domestic revenue is VND 1,331,244 billion.

According to the General Department of Taxation, the context of domestic revenue in 2023 still has many fluctuations because during the period of economic shutdown due to the Covid-19 epidemic, temporarily idle cash flow went into real estate investment, securities and banks in the late 2021 and early 2022 period.

Up to now, the package of monetary policy and solutions to healthy the market of the State Bank is forecasted to direct cash flow into substantive investment channels, creating added value for society, but this redirection takes more time to turn around to generate profits and revenue for the state budget.

Along with that, tax exemption and reduction policies issued in 2022 still affect the revenue in 2023 (such as reducing environmental protection tax according to Resolution No. 20/2022/UBTVQH15, reducing the value-added tax rate from 10% to 8% for groups of goods and services as prescribed in Decree No.15/2022/ND-CP dated January 28, 2022) and currently, the Government is studying and submitting some solutions to the National Assembly to remove difficulties for businesses, control inflation, stabilize the macro-economy, create a good environment for businesses to develop. Therefore, in the short term, it may reduce domestic revenue in 2023 compared to the estimate and put pressure on the implementation of revenue collection tasks for the tax sector in 2023.

In addition, the world economy is facing many difficulties and challenges when the pressure from inflation increases, geopolitical conflicts escalate, and the energy crisis becomes more and more serious, leading to a crisis in other commodity markets.

According to a report by the State Bank of Vietnam, up to now, 80 countries in the world have inflation of double digits or more, many major economies in the world simultaneously implement tight monetary policies, etc. That may trigger the decline, even faster economic recession in many major economies worldwide. Moreover, as a highly open economy, the fast, complicated and unpredictable developments of the world economy have been putting great pressure on our country's economy in 2023.

Continue striving to exceed the level of the task

Right from the beginning of the year, under the direction of the Ministry of Finance, the whole tax sector has prepared response scenarios in implementing collection tasks for the whole year 2023 and the period of 2023-2025 to fulfil the revenue target in the Resolution of the National Assembly.

To strive to exceed the task of state budget collection according to the estimates assigned by the National Assembly, right from the beginning of the year, tax authorities at all levels have closely followed the direction of the Government, the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Finance to organize the implementation of the solutions.

The tax sector also continues to review, research and propose solutions to support taxpayers to overcome difficulties; help businesses have more resources to promote production and business, promote economic growth, and create a premise for the increase of tax revenue sustainably; meet the financial resource needs for the Government, ministries, branches and localities to perform socio-economic development tasks.

At the same time, developing and implementing inspection and examination plans based on risk analysis and assessment; focus on inspecting, examining and combating revenue loss for businesses in high-risk industries, enterprises that are refunded value-added tax on exports, enterprises eligible for tax exemption or reduction, and businesses have associated activities, there are signs of transfer pricing; e-commerce business, business on digital platforms, transfer of capital, brands, projects, etc ; improve quality and innovate inspection and examination methods in terms of information technology application; organize to fully and promptly collect arising revenues or receivables according to the results of the inspection, examination and auditing agencies into the state budget.

In particular, tax authorities at all levels will review the tax debt until December 31, 2022, continue to handle debt according to the provisions of Resolution No. 94/2019/QH14, develop and assign targets for tax debt collection for 2023 for lower tax authorities; focus on urging tax amounts that have expired for payment to the state budget, avoiding the situation that taxpayers are charged late payment interest; classify tax debts fully and strictly according to the instructions in the Tax Debt Management Process to have appropriate solutions to manage and urge collection.

The Tax sector is also determined to implement measures to urge and coerce tax debt collection following the provisions of the Law on Tax Administration and its guiding documents, with the target that the total tax debt by December 31, 2023, is less than 5% of total state budget revenue.