After receiving written comments and organizing a consultation workshop with the business community on the draft revised Law on Tax Administration (hereinafter referred to as the draft), the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) has some comments.

Illustrative photo.

Regarding the time of issuing electronic invoices: Article 26 of the draft stipulates that electronic invoices must be issued at the exact time tax obligations arise, except for special cases prescribed by the Government. This provision is reasonable in principle, but is not consistent with the practical operations of digital platforms in the fields of transportation, delivery and post.

Accordingly, transactions appearing on this platform are large in volume and occur frequently, but invoices must still be issued each time they occur.

For individual customers, the number of transactions is large and continuous, but the platform still has to issue invoices for each occurrence.

For corporate customers, although payments are often made periodically and customers do not need to receive individual invoices, the platform still has to issue invoices each time, leading to increased time and management costs.

This leads to a cost burden and difficulties for platform businesses, technical support units and customers, and can also create a burden for state management activities.

Based on the above analysis, VCCI recommends that the drafting agency consider and guide to allow digital platform businesses to soon apply conventional periodic invoices for passenger transport services (by car and motorbike), transportation, and delivery of goods when providing services to customers who are businesses and organizations.

Regarding the content of postponing exit for beneficial owners of enterprises, Article 17.5 of the draft supplements the postponing exit for individuals who are beneficial owners of enterprises when the enterprise has not fulfilled its tax obligations.

According to the Enterprise Law, individuals only need to own 25% of capital to be beneficial owners of an enterprise, regardless of whether they have the right to manage or not. Beneficial owners are only responsible within the scope of their capital contribution or shares, not unlimitedly responsible for the tax obligations of the enterprise.

In many cases, beneficial owners do not directly manage or make decisions on the operations of the enterprise. Meanwhile, the purpose of the temporary exit suspension regulation is to put pressure on the person who directly owns and operates the enterprise to collect taxes.

In that case, the temporary exit suspension for beneficial owners is too broad, affecting the freedom of movement of these entities, especially those who do not directly manage the enterprise. This also has the potential to reduce the attractiveness of the investment environment, especially for foreign investors, when they may be restricted from leaving the country just because the enterprise contributing capital has not paid taxes.

Furthermore, currently, the tax industry has many tax enforcement measures such as withdrawing money from bank accounts, not allowing the use of invoices, seizing and auctioning assets, etc. The measure of temporarily suspending exit should only be applied specifically and to the right subjects.

Therefore, it is recommended that the drafting agency remove this provision.