At a meeting on management and administrative procedure reform with tax and customs authorities, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said that these two fields easily had negative acts, bureaucratic attitude, harassment and bribery. Thus, urgent administrative reform of these sectors is mandatory to meet development requirements of the economy and the business community.
Cutting 50 percent of time of clearance
After the Prime Minister's message was conveyed, the customs sector has worked tirelessly to accelerate reform to meet economic integration requirements. In 2014, despite a lot of difficulties, the customs sector finished the year target ahead of schedule. The sector collected VND248.5 trillion for the State coffers in 2014, 10.9 percent higher than the target and 12.2 percent higher than in 2013.
The important milestone of the customs sector in administration reform is the successful official operation of VNACCS/VCIS automated clearance system from April 2014, funded by the Japanese Government. The VNACCS/VCIS system is a useful assistant for the business community in the clearance of goods (the time for processing the clearance of goods on green flows is below 3 seconds). VNACCS/VCIS supports automatic fills, thus helping reduce errors in inputting data. Both customs officials and businesses reduce their paperwork because documents are encrypted and updated to the system.
To prepare for the deployment of the VNACCS/VCIS system, the customs sector connected the National Single Window Mechanism with the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Transport. This important event marked an important step in administrative procedure reform and demonstrated comprehensive international integration of Vietnam.
When he worked with the customs and tax authorities, PM Dung also signed to issue the Resolution 19 on improving the business environment and enhancing the national competitiveness. Accordingly, the customs sector targets to reduce the time for settling export and import procedures to the average of ASEAN-6 (14 days for export and 13 days for import). To know the reason for the time-consuming customs process, the sector performed a study customs time and announced the result of measuring release time on September 19, 2015. The lateness in customs clearance was related to other ministries and branches. In reality, the customs sector involved a third of total clearance time while other used the rest. This result forced relevant ministries and branches to review their jobs to better support the customs sector to reduce the release time.
The regulatory framework for customs was renewed after the National Assembly adopted the amended Customs Law No. 54/2014/QH13. This is an important legal document for the General Department of Vietnam Customs to implement administration reform policies of the Government.
Reducing tax payment time to 300 hours or shorter a year
The Prime Minister requested the tax sector to focus on tax administration reform with specific targets. The tax payment time will be reduced to no more than 300 hours by the end of 2014 and to the average of ASEAN-6 (171 hours a year) in 2015. The number of tax payments will be minimised to the average of regional countries.
Right after the meeting with the Prime Minister, the tax service showed its determination to implementing synchronous solutions to facilitate taxpayers. The authority also reminded tax officers of their service attitude to taxpayers. Besides, many solutions to support taxpayers have been introduced. By the end of 2014, 95 percent of businesses declared tax declarations online. This is considered the greatest success of the tax service in 2014. The Circular 151 was appreciated by the business community.
The tax service also removed some tax administrative procedures and reduced 88.36 hours of tax payment. Notably, in tax administration, the circular eradicated the provision that company must declare interim quarterly corporate income tax. The taxpayer will pay provisional quarterly tax and finalise annual income tax. This measure helps reduce 47 hours a day for taxpayers and reduce four times of payment a year.
The 8th Session of the 13th National Assembly (October 2014) added 15 tax support solutions to the National Assembly's Resolution. These solutions consist of six contents on corporate income tax, three contents on personal income tax, two contents on VAT, one content on loyalty, one on exchange rate tax, one on dividend payment for State stake in 2015, and one on tax fine removal.
Bui Van Nam, Director General of General Department of Taxation, said the tax sector was busy with strong administration reform. The reform is expected to boost the image of tax sector, particularly its contributions to the economy.
Le Hien
Vietnamese
