According to local custom departments, the faked export of Vietnam has been getting more sophisticated and showing no signs of stopping. Facing with this difficulty, the General Customs Department has directed all of its local departments to strengthen inspection and control of VAT refund for exported shipments.
According to Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, businesses have recently taken advantage of the favourable conditions in export shipment and online customs procedures. The government's policy on encouraging exports allows inspection exemption for over 80 percent of exports. Besides, the electronic customs procedures would notify businesses beforehand which channel its shipment was sorted into.
Various forms of cheating
Taking advantage of this mechanism, when sorted into the red channel, companies will prepare shipments properly to go through customs inspection, or pull some tricks to get the green channel while asking to abrogate the red channel; on the other hand, when successful being free from customs inspection, businesses will perform faked export to reap illegal gain from the domestic VAT.
Another trick is that companies would choose not to load enough goods at the manufacturing facility of the company or withdraw goods on the transportation. In these cases, Customs Departments check the outside of containers and only inspect further when notice signs of violation or just perform casual guarantee customs management. However this management procedure is not efficient enough to detect faked exports.
The customs authorities also discovered a number of cases of foreign invested companies processing and producing export goods but did not ship goods as prescribed, instead bringing the finished products into local market, evading import duty.
In the Southwest border, the Bureau of anti-smuggling, the General Customs Department detected that some companies had taken advantage of favourable regulations in the business establishment and dissolution to established exporting businesses eligible for VAT refund; to print and issue VAT invoices, using all possible tricks to evade customs inspection during exporting procedures, taking advantage of payments through current accounts between import and export companies to commit a fraud in export.
Control of the situation
To limit those law abusing cases, Ho Chi Minh Customs Department proposed the Ministry of Finance and the General Customs Department to timely come up with managing solutions; which adjust the existing regulations on exports in e-customs procedures as well as the monitoring of the changing gates of shipments, to control the current faked export situation.
Meanwhile, the Anti-Smuggling Bureau and local Customs Departments believes that in the coming time, customs forces need to strengthen information gathering to understand the situation in key areas, categorised suspicious businesses, investigating cases and making necessary arrest; providing timely warnings of situation and methods of illegal VAT refund in exporting.
In addition, the General Customs Department needs to strengthen the application of risk management systems in the classification, management of companies and shipments; considering applying suitable management measures to prevent the act of cheating and fraud from businesses; fighting fraud in VAT refund, strengthening export supervision including shipments of green channel; arranging inspection plans, focusing on suspicious businesses, such as businesses who has deletion or whose export value of large VAT refund; organising post-clearance checks for suspicious businesses to protect the tax for the state budget.
M.L
Vietnamese
