The General Department of Vietnam Customs said customs agencies will pilot information exchange and deploy an around-the-clock electronic tax collection and customs clearance programme (the 24/7 tax payment scheme ) starting from November 2017. This is next reform step of the customs sector to help enterprises quickly clear goods and carry out extensive cross-sector reforms to reach the ASEAN 4 level of export and import facilitation, as guided by the Government.
Businesses benefit
According to representatives from the Import and Export Tax Bureau, the 24/7 tax payment scheme to be deployed by the General Department of Vietnam Customs will be applied to only commercial banks signing collection agreements with the General Department. Up to now, 36 commercial banks have signed budget collection cooperation agreements with the General Department of Customs, exchanged payment information via electronic environment. Taxpayers need to open accounts at commercial banks.
Previously, taxpayers paid financial obligations at commercial banks, then banks transferred tax information to customs authorities and the State Treasury, and customs offices confirmed the information and cleared the goods. Now, taxpayers are allowed to declare taxes on forms provided at the Electronic Customs Payment Portal anytime, anywhere with internet access and banks verify tax collection results immediately after receiving tax transfer requests. Commodities are cleared right after that.
For the past time, tax payment at credit institutions, especially commercial banks having collection cooperation with the General Department, has been promoted effectively to best support taxpayers. At present, electronic payment via banks and the State Treasury accounts for about 92 per cent of tax revenue, but it has not supported cut-off-time (COT) transactions and customs agencies still have to arrange human resources for cash collection. In addition, there is still inaccurate information in declaration forms filed to banks by enterprises, resulting in delays in goods clearance and failures to meet clearance speed of the VNACCS system.
Therefore, the 24/7 tax payment scheme has completely overcome these weaknesses. In particular, this new form of tax payment will ensure the integrity and confidentiality of all taxpayers’ information during the transaction, and customise information fields in exchanging one or more forms at banks to reduce their working time with banks. For authorities, this scheme will help reduce personnel for tax collection and simplify related processes. It ensures that tax is correctly settled right after taxpayers fulfil their duties, hence avoiding mistaken coercion. It will also minimise information corrections in tax forms. This will increase the degree of satisfaction of businesses, as well as international investors. This new form of tax collection will enable commercial banks to coordinate with the General Department of Vietnam Customs to develop and improve payment services for customers, attract more potential customers, and limit information errors in payment documents.
How to deploy?
Reportedly, taxpayers will have to provide a digital signature to log into VNACCS; register debit account authorisation for the 24/7 tax payment and customs clearance services; register with commercial banks where their accounts are open and provide it to customs offices in July 2017.
Customs authorities will amend and supplement processes stated in Decision 384/QD-TCHQ on regulations on information exchange of e-customs declaration forms, taxes, late payments, fines, fees, charges and other levies, tax guarantees for import-export goods; build information technology systems and instructions on procedures for taxpayers on the system. Besides, carrying out this scheme, customs offices will sign additional cooperation agreements with commercial banks besides the tax collection cooperation agreements. Accordingly, commercial banks will coordinate in tax collection as agreed with the General Department of Customs.
Banks at the service will sign unconditional and irrevocable authorisation with taxpayers to allow the former to deduct money from the latter’s payment accounts to execute 24/7 tax payment and customs clearance. At the same time, banks will provide the list and contents of taxpayers’ commitments, unconditional and irrevocable authorisation for the General Department of Customs. Besides, it is necessary to upgrade information exchange software which receives messages of payment orders of taxpayers from the General Department of Customs (check and certify taxpayers’ digital signatures, account balances).
Le Hien
VCCI NEWS
