Deploying electronic invoices generated from cash registers contributes to transparency in business operations and improves tax management efficiency. Photo: Le Dong - VNA

Accordingly, based on a quick survey of opinions from 1,368 businesses nationwide in June, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) said that the policy of sanctioning administrative violations against business households and individuals is a correct and necessary policy, but also presents challenges that need to be addressed.

Draft Decree 70/2025/ND-CP has added a provision requiring business households and individuals with revenue of VND1 billion/year or more to use electronic invoices from cash registers connected to tax authorities. This is a major change in management policy for this group of subjects. Because through practical surveys of businesses, it shows that business households do not have a deep understanding of the regulations: 68% of households only have a preliminary understanding or are not sure what to do; 21% do not understand; 73% of business households face many challenges in implementing regulations due to lack of knowledge, technological skills and difficulty in changing old management habits...

The above challenges, along with the specific nature of limited resources, lead to the situation that in the initial period of compliance, business households are likely to violate some regulations on invoices, especially errors in form such as incorrect indicators, invoices not issued at the right time... These are unintentional errors due to business households not being familiar with new ways of doing things, not being proficient in technology... not due to intentional non-compliance with State regulations, intentional tax evasion. Therefore, the law needs to have a humane and reasonable policy on sanctioning violations to help business households feel secure in complying with new regulations, while also nurturing long-term revenue sources for the budget.

From the above analysis, VCCI recommends that the drafting agency add a provision that does not apply administrative sanctions to business households violating regulations on form in the initial period, which can be considered for 2 years. Business households are responsible for correcting violations and paying the tax amount (if any) arising from these violations.

Regarding the time of detecting violations at the same time, the draft regulation stipulates that on the same day, if the tax authority discovers multiple violating invoices, it will only impose a penalty for one violation and apply aggravating circumstances. This regulation is unclear at what point is considered “on the same day”. During a 45-day inspection period, if the inspection team discovers a number of invoices at the wrong time each day, is it considered the same day? Therefore, VCCI recommends that the drafting agency consider amending “on the same day” to “during a tax inspection and examination”.

In addition, the viewpoint of combining violations for handling needs to consider the point that when imposing administrative sanctions, the principle of which violation is committed must be applied, except in special cases, only the highest fine level among the violations such as false declaration of indicators at the same time will be applied; Late submission of multiple tax declarations of the same tax on the same day... Combining violations is necessary because the requirements for taxes and invoices are extremely detailed, in many cases it is just a formality error. However, the regulations on these special cases currently only cover repeated violations of the same violation, such as false declaration of many groups of indicators (the same act of false declaration of indicators). Therefore, VCCI recommends that the drafting agency add more exceptions.

In addition to the above contents, the draft also mentions violations of issuing invoices at the wrong time but does not affect tax obligations. According to the reflection of enterprises, issuing electronic invoices depends on the operation of the technology system. In many cases, this system may stop working or have errors due to objective reasons such as software errors, cyber attacks, etc. These situations may lead to the issuance of invoices at the wrong time, but in essence, the enterprise does not affect its tax obligations and the budget is not damaged. Therefore, VCCI proposed that the drafting agency amend the direction to only issue a warning penalty for this behavior with the lightest fine.

Regarding the penalty for tax underpayment, VCCI believes that this provision is appropriate because in essence, the act of illegal invoices is an act that constitutes the violation of false declaration and tax underpayment, not a separate act. This provision is also consistent with the principle that each act is only subject to one administrative penalty under the Law on Handling of Administrative Violations. However, in addition to the act of using illegal invoices, according to the reflection of enterprises, there are also cases where enterprises have not issued invoices, leading to false declaration and tax underpayment. This behavior is similar to the above behavior - both are components of false declaration and tax underpayment. Or the act of not deducting from the taxpayer's account is regulated as a penalty for commercial banks if they do not properly perform the obligation to deduct and transfer tax from the taxpayer's account to the State budget when receiving a request from the tax authority.

However, according to the reflection of enterprises, in reality, there are many cases of force majeure, with legitimate reasons and other cases due to objective factors, not the fault of the bank, that make the bank unable to automatically deduct and transfer money from the taxpayer's account to the State budget account. For that reason, VCCI proposed that the drafting agency supplement in the direction of adding no penalty for the act of not issuing invoices if it has been penalized for the act of false declaration leading to underpayment of tax payable and adding special cases and exceptions in the penalty for banks to ensure the fairness of the law.