“State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are still major taxpayers to the State Budget. On the list of the 1,000 biggest taxpayers in Vietnam in 2016, also known as V1000 rankings, SOEs accounted for nearly 60 per cent of total corporate income tax, a substantial growth from 45 per cent in 2015,” said a report conducted by Vietnam Report Joint Stock Company, online newspaper VietNamNet - Ministry of Information and Communications and Tax Magazine - General Department of Taxation.
This aimed to honour and stimulate businesses to contribute more to the national coffers.
Vinamilk enters Top 5 for the first time
According to V1000 data, V1000 taxpayers paid over VND90 trillion to the State Budget, up 11.87 per cent from the value in the 2015 V1000 list and equal 10.41 per cent of total tax revenue in 2015. Notably, the Top 100 companies made up nearly 75 per cent of total corporate income tax paid by V1000 taxpayers.
The Top 10 group included three State-owned lenders, namely Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV), Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade (VietinBank) and Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam (Vietcombank). Vinamilk also entered the Top 5 group of the V1000 rankings 2016 for the first time. Regular faces on the list comprised Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam), Military Telecommunication Group (Viettel), PetroVietnam Gas Corporation and Honda Vietnam.
The private sector has played a bigger role and contributed 27 per cent of tax revenue. After Vinamilk, more private companies will enter Top 10 of V1000 list.
Extractive and petroleum companies accounted up to 30 per cent of tax payment value in spite of a few appearances. The runner-up was telecom and information technology with 15 per cent of tax payment value, followed by the financial sector with 11 per cent. Although companies engaged in construction, building materials and real estate were the most numerous on the rankings list, they made up just 8 per cent of total tax value.
Tax: Reform but not enough
Vietnam Report also conducted surveys and collected comments from V1000 companies in the latest five years on tax reforms. According to results, companies had a positive outlook on tax policy reforms since 2015.
In the past year, drastic tax and administrative procedure reforms have created fundamental changes in tax management. According to a recent report by the Ministry of Finance, policy reforms in the past two years achieved preset targets. Furthermore, enterprises also had positive remarks on policy changes. Up to 88 per cent of companies had positive and relatively positive feedback on tax law changes in the period and only one per cent had negative feedback. Tax policies convinced the majority of enterprises of tax reform.
Their assessments on the current tax system of Vietnam were more positive than in 2015. Up to 61 per cent of enterprises wanted to have more changes in the tax system in 2015 and the situation reversed in 2016 when 65 per cent responded that the tax system had been stable enough and needed no changes or just a little if needed. 75 per cent of companies said the access to tax laws was available, accessible and supportive of tax payment.
In addition to collecting opinions about tax laws, the survey of V1000 companies also asked respondents of eight tax items directly related to their production and business activities, including excise tax, corporate income tax, value added tax, import and export, personal income tax, special consumption tax, land use tax, resource tax, and other taxes.
Survey results showed that 25 per cent and 23 per cent of respondents were respectively concerned about personal income tax and corporate income tax, and expected the two taxes to be significantly amended. But, with the aim of removing difficulties and supporting enterprises to develop production and business operations, enhance competitiveness and improve the business environment, the Ministry of Finance will introduce new preferential taxes, particularly corporate income tax, personal income tax, import tax, value added tax and special consumption tax.
However, they still face many tax related issues, for example tax policies (56 per cent of respondents complained), complicated administrative procedures (36 per cent), online tax declaration (23 per cent), cumbersome tax forms (20 per cent), and tax auditing (17 per cent).
The above results showed that tax laws and policies are not new but they are always a concern of enterprises. Therefore, the Government and tax authorities need a long constant process to deal with this. This is also a goal and destination of tax system reform aimed to inspire enterprises. The tax system reform strategy in the 2011 - 2020 period is now highly concentrated and information technology application and e-tax application are regarded as the most important task to improve tax administration effectiveness and efficiency. Companies concerned about online tax declaration increased from 11 per cent in 2014 to 23 per cent in 2015 and this became their third concern, after administrative procedures and before cumbersome formalities and frequent policy changes.
In addition, 43 per cent of respondents expected increased transparency to minimise errors and omissions, and 23 per cent hoped to join tax law drafting processes.
Anh Mai
Vietnamese
