One-Time Consultations Produce High Efficiency

The scheme of piloting one-time consultations and using results many times (referred to as the one-time consultation scheme) will contribute to reducing time and costs, creating favorable conditions for both enterprises and customs authorities.

According to a representative of the Import-Export Tax Department (General Department of Vietnam Customs), a one-time consultation is the application of the consultation results of the previous import-export to the next import-export activities within one customs sub-department or several sub-departments belonging to different customs departments, according to the process of issuing and applying notices using the results of the consultation many times.

According to the representative of the Import and Export Tax Department, the current regulations and guidelines have basically met the requirements for consultation in general; however, the regulations and guidance on one-time consultations still has unclear points, which makes it difficult to apply consistently.

Specifically, Clause 6 Article 25 of Circular 38/2015/TT-BTC amended and supplemented in Clause 14 Article 1 of Circular 39/2018/TT-BTC, prescribed the basis of one-time consultation that has mentioned the conditions of application, the responsibility of the customs declarer, the responsibility of the customs office in applying the one-time consultation. Accordingly, a one-time consultation is applied when information and data for checking and determining the customs value of import and export goods proposed for one-time consultation compared to identical goods having similar consultation. The General Department of Customs also issued Decision 1810/QD-TCHQ dated June 15, 2018 (Clause 6, Article 5) providing guidance on procedures for one-time consultations, updating data about the one-time consultation.

However, due to the fact that the one-time consultation in Clause 4, Article 25 of Circular 38/2015/TT-BTC is still incomplete, details about how to do it in different customs departments cannot be implemented in practice; or there are some units finding it difficult to apply the guidance.

Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department has actively implemented the regulation in accordance with the provisions of Circular 38/2015/TT-BTC. Accordingly, the Department established a list of 100 enterprises with good legal compliance records, large turnover, and a large number of customs declarations to allow application of one-time consultations. The results showed that Ho Chi Minh City Customs received 48 documents from 5 sub-departments, of which 38 were accepted and issued notices. For 38 notices issued, 26/38 (about 69%) of one-time consultation notices were applied up to 153 times, giving 718 consultations declarations in subsequent consultations, mainly for 2-wheel motorbikes, functional foods, industrial processed foods; 12/38 (about 31%) notices have not been applied yet.

The representative of the Import and Export Tax Department said that, according to the above-mentioned statistics, one-time consultations have not been applied effectively. The reason is that the proposal, approval and issuance of the notice must go through two levels (from the sub-department to the department), depending on whether the sub-department level considers and transfers the dossier to the department or not, so businesses cannot anticipate whether their proposal will be accepted or not. The list of enterprises subject to review is not publicly available, so not all enterprises know about this mechanism or after the notice is issued, the application or non-application depends on the sub-department receiving the declaration form agreeing, or not, without a clear and transparent standard, leading to enterprises not really trusting in their performance. In particular, the obstacles in the conditions of application of the provisions of Circular 38/2015/TT-BTC and Circular 39/2018/TT-BTC have not been handled, affecting the approval of the Customs sub-department.

From the results of reviewing the application of regulations, the Import and Export Department of Taxation emphasized that in order to improve transparency and clarity, to make the application easy and really effective, it is necessary to have a one-time consultation scheme.

The one-time consultation scheme has been approved by the General Department of Customs, aiming to simplify procedures, shorten customs clearance and release time, reduce workload for Customs authorities and business community in the public customs declaration, inspection and valuation; improve the responsibility of customs officers in checking, consulting, determining customs value; encourage the compliance of enterprises in customs value declaration and cooperation with customs authorities.

The one-time consultation scheme is also aimed at strengthening the management of value in the whole sector, preventing goods moving from places of high customs valuation to places of low customs valuation to do customs procedures, causing revenue losses to the budget.

By Le Hien, Vietnam Business Forum