Decision 508/QD-TTg 2022 on approving the Tax System Reform Strategy until 2030

DECISION

Approving the Strategy for reform of the tax system through 2030^[1]

THE PRIME MINISTER

Pursuant to the June 19, 2015 Law on Organization of the Government; and the November 22, 2019 Law Amending and Supplementing a Number of Articles of the Law on Organization of the Government and the Law on Organization of Local Administration;

Pursuant to the Government’s Decree No. 87/2017/ND-CP of July 26, 2017, defining the functions, tasks, powers and organizational structure of the Ministry of Finance;

At the proposal of the Minister of Finance,

DECIDES:

Article 1. To approve the Strategy for reform of the tax system through 2030 (below referred to as the Strategy) with the following principal contents:

I. VIEWPOINTS AND GENERAL OBJECTIVES

1. Viewpoints

a/ Taxes, charges and fees constitute a tool of the State that contributes to managing, regulating and stabilizing the macro-economy, restructuring the economy, mobilizing resources to ensure quality and efficient economic growth and rapid and sustainable development; and to harmoniously settling economic development and environmental issues associated with the objectives and tasks of the 2021-2030 ten-year socio-economic development strategy;

b/ The tax policy system will be improved to be uniform, state budget revenues will be restructured to ensure sustainability and contribute to improving the investment and business environment in the direction of expanding tax bases, rationally mobilizing resources for the state budget, ensuring uniformity, fairness and neutrality of tax policies, and making tax policies simple, transparent, clear and easy to understand and implement. Tax policies will only be provided in legal documents on taxes and tax laws and improved and revised to ensure consistency in terms of legal effect between the tax laws and relevant legal documents;

c/ Tax administration institutions will continue to be improved in order to simplify administrative procedures; the application of information technology will be intensified for reducing tax law compliance costs for the people and enterprises; and at the same time, legal grounds will be created for building modern, professional, effective, efficient, corruption-free and capable tax offices of Vietnam that can achieve and properly manage objectives set forth by, and contents of, reform of the tax system.

2. General objectives

To continue improving the tax policy system associated with restructuring of state budget revenues in the direction of covering all revenue sources and expanding revenue bases, especially new revenue sources, in conformity with international practices; to ensure the ratio of domestic revenues and reasonable ratio of indirect taxes and direct taxes, and better exploit taxes, charges and fees on property, natural resources and environmental protection; to minimize the integration of social policies into tax laws and tax exemption and reduction policies, thereby ensuring neutrality of taxes and building a uniform and firmly structured tax system to help reasonably mobilize resources for the state budget and create a convenient and fair business investment environment, promoting investment and competition, and rationally regulating incomes as suitable to the economic integration and development process.

To build Vietnam’s tax sector to be modern and streamlined that effectively and efficiently operates; to ensure that taxes, charges and fees will be managed in a uniform, transparent, specialized and professional manner and by risk management methods; to intensify the application of information technology, simplify administrative procedures, and reduce compliance costs for the people and enterprises; to put the center of the tax administration on the electronic tax platform and three basic pillars, namely: adequate, uniform, modern and integration-based tax administration institutions; professional, uncorrupted and keen-on-innovation human resources; and modern and integrated information technology meeting tax administration requirements in a digital economy.

II. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES AND TASKS

1. Regarding reform of tax policies

To synchronously improve Vietnam’s tax policy system in conformity with good tax system standards according to international practices, while meeting requirements on resources for the implementation of the 2021-2030 ten-year socio-economic development strategy, covering the following major taxes, charges and fees:

a/ Value-added tax;

b/ Excise tax;

c/ Import duty and export duty;

d/ Enterprise income tax;

dd/ Personal income tax;

e/ Royalty;

g/ Agricultural land use tax;

h/ Non-agricultural land use tax;

i/ Environmental protection tax;

k/ Other charges, fees and revenues belonging to the state budget.

Regarding the amount of state budget revenues from taxes and charges, to ensure that state budget revenues from taxes and charges shall be maintained at a stable and reasonable ratio in accordance with the 5-year socio-economic development strategies for the 2021-2025 period and 2026-2030 period; in the initial period, to provide support to help enterprises and the people overcome difficulties and restore their production and business activities negatively affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically as follows:

- By 2025, the average ratio of state budget revenues will account for at least 16% of GDP, in which the ratio of revenues from taxes and charges will account for 13-14% of GDP; the ratio of domestic revenues to the total state budget revenues will reach 85-86%. In the initial period, support will be provided to enterprises and the people to overcome difficulties and restore their production and business activities negatively affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

- By 2030, the ratio of state budget revenues will account for 16-17% of GDP, in which the ratio of revenues from taxes and charges account for 14-15% of GDP; the ratio of domestic revenues to the total state budget revenues will reach 86-87%.

2. Regarding reform of tax administration

To comprehensively modernize the tax administration work in conformity with international practices and Vietnam’s law, focusing on tax administration institutions, human resources and information technology; specifically, to ensure uniform, public, transparent and fair tax administration institutions, apply risk management methods in tax administration, and create favorable conditions for taxpayers’ willing compliance and for tax offices to be capable of performing effective and efficient tax administration; to build the contingent of professional, specialized and uncorrupted tax officers and an integrated and centralized information technology system meeting requirements of the processing and provision of information for tax administration work, direction and administration by tax offices and provision of e-services and digital services to taxpayers.

Major targets

a/ By 2025

- The level of taxpayers’ satisfaction with services provided by tax offices will be at least 90%.

- The tax administration law and all guiding documents and relevant legal documents will be supplemented or promulgated as planned.

- The percentage of taxpayers receiving support provided by electronic means will be at least 70%.

- The percentage of tax registration dossiers processed online by tax offices at levels 3 and 4 to the total received dossiers will be at least 80%.

- The percentage of tax declaration, payment, refund, exemption and reduction by electronic means by/for corporate taxpayers and individual taxpayers will be at least 98% and 85%, respectively.

- The percentage of taxpayers’ tax refund, exemption and reduction dossiers processed by tax offices with processing results notified within law-specified time limits will be at least 98%.

- The ratio of total tax arrears by December 31 of a year to tax amounts and other state budget revenues collected in such year will not exceed 8% (in which the percentage of outstanding tax and charge debts will account for under 5% of total state budget revenues); and the percentage of collected debts will account for at least 80% of recoverable debts which are carried forward from the preceding year as of December 31.

- To build an integrated and centralized information technology system to meet all demands for collection, processing, storage and exploitation of data for tax administration work, and direction and management by tax offices, and provision of e-services to taxpayers; all information on e-tax declaration and payment will be processed within 24 hours; all tax amounts paid by electronic means will be accounted according to real time of payment; all taxpayers will be granted accounts for searching their tax obligation and e-tax payment on smart mobile devices; and the information technology system will meet requirements on remote processing and access for 98% of civil servants who have to handle work outside working offices of tax offices.

b/ By 2030

- The level of taxpayers’ satisfaction with services provided by tax offices will be at least 95%.

- The tax administration law and all guiding documents and relevant legal documents will be supplemented or promulgated as planned.

- The percentage of taxpayers receiving support provided by electronic means will be at least 90%.

- The percentage of tax registration dossiers processed online by tax offices at levels 3 and 4 to the total received dossiers will be at least 90%.

- The percentage of tax declaration, payment, refund, exemption and reduction by electronic means by/for corporate taxpayers and individual taxpayers will be at least 98% and 90%, respectively.

- The percentage of taxpayers’ tax refund, exemption and reduction dossiers processed by tax offices with processing results notified within law-specified time limits will be at least 98%.

- The ratio of total tax arrears by December 31 of a year to tax amounts and other state budget revenues collected in such year will not exceed 7% (in which the percentage of outstanding tax and charge debts will account for under 5% of total state budget revenues); and the percentage of collected debts will account for at least 90% of total recoverable debts which are carried forward from the preceding year as of December 31.

- To build an integrated and centralized information technology system to meet all demands for collection, processing, storage and exploitation of data for tax administration work, and direction and management by tax offices, and provision of e-services to taxpayers; all information on e-tax declaration and payment will be processed within 24 hours; all tax amounts paid by electronic means will be accounted according to real time of payment; all taxpayers will be granted accounts for searching their tax obligation and e-tax payment on smart mobile devices; and the information technology system will meet requirements on remote processing and access for 98% of civil servants who have to handle work outside working offices of tax offices.

III. SOLUTIONS TO IMPLEMENT THE STRATEGY

1. Regarding reform of tax policies

a/ For value-added tax (VAT): To expand tax bases by reducing commodity and service groups not liable to VAT and those subject to the VAT rate of 5%, proceeding to basically apply a single VAT rate; to consider increasing VAT rates according to a set schedule; to review and adjust the turnover threshold for which the credit method is applied to suit the reality; to study uniformly applying the tax calculation method based on percentage (%) of turnover for taxpayers with turnover amounts below thresholds or ineligible for application of the credit method; to improve VAT-related regulations on export commodities and services, ensuring reflection of their substance and conformity with international practices; to study amendments and supplementations to regulations on VAT credit and refund in order to make them simpler, more transparent and consistent with other relevant regulations;

b/ For excise tax: To review, and study adjusting objects liable to excise tax in order to regulate consumption to be suitable to changes in social consumption trends and orientations of the Party and the State regarding the protection of the people’s health and environmental protection; to work out a schedule for increasing excise tax rates for cigarettes, beer and liquor in order to inhibit the production and consumption thereof and realize international commitments; to review and adjust excise tax rates for a number of commodity items to suit socio-economic conditions in the 2021-2030 period; to study applying pro rata excise tax rates in combination with absolute excise tax amounts to a number of commodities and services liable to excise tax;

c/ For import duty and export duty: To continue reducing the number of duty rates in order to simplify the import tariff, striving for the target that by 2025, the number of import duty rates will be reduced from current 32 to 25 by 2025 and 20 by 2030; to study revising import duty and export duty policies in order to boost export, increase domestic value, and limit export of unprocessed natural resources and minerals; to adopt appropriate preferential policies to promote the development of spearhead industries, support industries and priority fields in conformity with the country’s socio-economic development orientations in each period and international commitments; to study revising regulations on commodities for on-spot export or on-spot import and regulations on non-tariff zones to be consistent with relevant regulations, thereby inhibiting trade frauds and tax evasion;

d/ For enterprise income tax (EIT): To review and revise or annul EIT exemption and reduction incentives that are no longer appropriate to development and international integration requirements; to minimize the integration of social policies into EIT exemption and reduction policies, thereby ensuring the neutrality of EIT for stable application in the medium term and long term; to give EIT incentives to small-sized enterprises and micro-enterprises and, at the same time, to shift from quantity-based foreign investment attraction policies into quality-based ones, and encourage all economic sectors to invest in spearhead industries and sectors and geographical areas in need of investment promotion; to expand EIT bases in conformity with the national socio-economic conditions and international practices; to implement standards on transfer pricing prevention and combat and revenue source erosion combat in conformity with international practices;

dd/ For personal income tax (PIT): To review and add PIT-liable subjects; to study revising PIT policies in the direction of adjusting the number of PIT rates and specific PIT rates to suit taxable incomes and substance of each type of income, thereby simplifying the PIT account-finalization for both taxpayers and tax administration offices, and preventing PIT evasion and avoidance; to study revising regulations on PIT exemption and reduction to be suitable to the national socio-economic conditions in each period and in conformity with international practices;

e/ For royalty: To study revising regulations on royalty, royalty calculation prices, and natural resource volumes used for royalty calculation; to revise the royalty bracket, rates and exemption or reduction policies to become more transparent and clearer, ensuring that royalty policies continue to serve as an effective tool to help manage and protect natural resources, promote the economical and efficient use of natural resources, and encourage deep processing and raising of value of natural resources;

g/ For property-related taxes (including also agricultural land use tax and non-agricultural land use tax): To continue giving agricultural land use tax exemption until the end of 2025 in order to contribute to implementing the Party’s and the State’s guidelines and viewpoints on development of agriculture and rural areas; to review and comprehensively evaluate the implementation of non-agricultural land use tax policies for improving them in the direction of increasing the regulated rate of added values from land and adding policies on collection of taxes on houses in order to promote efficient use of land and houses, thus inhibiting house and land speculation, and mobilizing reasonable and stable revenue sources for the state budget in conformity with the country’s socio-economic conditions and international practices; at the same time, to formulate simple and easy-to-understand tax policies to facilitate the identification of property tax-liable subjects and determination of payable tax amounts in accordance with the land law and relevant regulations;

h/ For environmental protection tax (EPT): To study including more commodities likely to cause environmental pollution in EPT-liable objects; to consider adjusting EPT bracket and rates in order to ensure that EPT policies serve as an important economic tool to help limit the import, production and use of commodities likely to cause environmental pollution;

i/ For other charges, fees and state budget revenues: To review and improve the legal system on charges and fees in the direction of efficiently collecting charges and fees for property, natural resources and environmental protection activities; to implement a schedule of increasing charge rates to gradually cover all necessary expenses in expense rates; to speed up the transformation of charges into public non-business service prices and promote the mobilization of social resources for provision of public services; to step up the reform of administrative procedures and provision of online public services in order to continue improving the business environment, liberating social resources and improving the national competitiveness, while ensuring conformity with the guideline of reorganizing the apparatus of state agencies and non-business units.

To study imposing new revenues or taxes on new business activities or forms suitable to the practical development, ensuring that Vietnam’s taxation right is conformable with its socio-economic conditions in each period and international practices; to review and improve policies on other state budget revenues in conformity with reality and consistency with specialized laws.

2. Regarding reform of tax administration work

a/ To study revising and improving tax administration institutions in order to raise the capacity to manage tax collection and meet requirements of the e-government and, at the same time, to promote the voluntary compliance based on the classification of law compliance levels and risk levels of taxpayers; to improve tax administration institutions in a number of important fields such as transfer pricing combat; emerging production and business activities in the economy, digital economy, sharing economy, smart production, and cross-border transactions; tax agency; and exchange of information between tax offices and related agencies; to simplify administrative procedures, review, reduce or simplify components of tax registration, payment, refund, exemption and reduction dossiers, and performance of tax-related transactions in the cyber environment in conformity with international practices; to ensure the proactive role of tax offices in the recovery of tax arrears and performance of fast-track procedures for automatic write-off/recovery of small arrears amounts, and continue studying the formulation of regulations on charge-off/write-off of arrears amounts of taxpayers that are unable to make remittances into the state budget; to study adding a regulation that tax offices are those tasked to carry out a number of investigating activities; to streamline the organizational apparatus of tax offices at all levels to become more effective and efficient; to redesign the tax administration process in order to ensure that information technology is efficiently applied as soon as relevant legal documents take effect;

b/ To fully and promptly provide and disseminate tax laws and tax administration information to taxpayers and other organizations and individuals in order to raise the public awareness and social consensus about the State’s taxation work; to apply information technology for providing support to taxpayers so as to reduce costs for performance of tax-related administrative procedures and, at the same time, improve the voluntary compliance level of taxpayers; to encourage and support the development of institutional tax service providers;

c/ To comprehensively and effectively reform tax registration, declaration, payment, refund, exemption and reduction dossiers and procedures to become clearer, more transparent and easier for implementation; to review and reduce components of tax registration, declaration, payment and refund dossiers to make such dossiers clearer, more transparent and easier to make, and optimize the process of settling administrative procedures based on application of information technology; to renovate, and raise the efficiency of the implementation of, the single-window and interdisciplinary single-window mechanisms for electronic settlement of administrative procedures among state management agencies, thereby shortening the time for settlement of procedures for taxpayers; to maintain and increase forms of e-transactions in the receipt and settlement of tax-related administrative procedures of level 3 or higher level for enterprises and organizations; to concentrate efforts on helping individual taxpayers use appropriate e-transaction forms in order to create more favorable conditions and reduce compliance costs for taxpayers. The centralized tax accounting regime will be automatically implemented by tax accounting applications integrated with tax administration applications in order to collect accounting information from tax administration operations and automatically account the to-be-collected, already collected, exempt, reduced, charged-off, written-off, to-be-refunded and already refunded tax amount of each taxpayer and each tax office on a daily basis. To apply modern tax statistical methods on the basis of the tax administration database and statistical survey information collected on the basis of the set of tax statistics indicators in order to measure results of tax administration and state budget revenue management in conformity with relevant international indicators; to apply information technology for analyzing data and giving forecasts to serve the direction and administration work, formulation of tax policies, estimation of state budget revenues, and evaluation of the health of enterprises and health of the economy based on tax criteria managed by the tax sector. To modernize the revenue estimation by internationally recognized methods for main taxes, and step by step apply such methods to improve the quality and efficiency of the analysis and estimation of revenues and making of state budget revenue estimates, thereby meeting requirements of the reform and modernization of the tax system in the 2021-2030 period;

d/ To raise the inspection and examination capacity approaching good international practices through intensifying the application of information technology to serve tax inspection and examination activities in conformity with orientations for building of the e-government; to intensify the application of risk management methods in tax inspection and examination activities as an effective measure to promptly detect, prevent and handle tax-related violations and reduce complaints made after tax inspection and examination;

dd/ To attach importance to, and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of, the settlement of tax-related complaints, denunciations and proceedings in conformity with law and the tax sector’s practical conditions; to improve procedures and processes for settlement of tax-related complaints, denunciations and proceedings toward simplicity, publicity, transparency and more convenience for taxpayers. To renovate, and raise capacity of, legal affairs and enhance the monitoring of the law implementation and inspection and handling of tax documents; to build capacity for tax officers carrying out the tax-related judicial assessment or participating in administrative and criminal proceedings in tax-related matters and cases. To organize the implementation of the national strategic plan on corruption prevention and fighting in the tax sector; to enhance the intra-sector control as an effective measure to ensure strict implementation of the tax laws as well as order and discipline of the sector, thereby preventing tax officers’ acts of causing troubles to or harassing taxpayers for bribes;

e/ To recover tax arrears properly, fully and promptly, thereby reducing accrued tax arrears and preventing under-collection of state budget revenues. To raise the quality of the management of tax arrears and enforcement of tax arrears payment in the direction of simplifying procedures for management of tax arrears and enforcement of tax arrears payment in order to improve the management efficiency, minimize the time required for handling relevant affairs and reduce accrued tax arrears; to apply risk management methods and information technology in the management of tax arrears and enforcement of tax arrears payment;

g/ To raise the international tax administration capacity by formulating a strategy for negotiation on double taxation avoidance agreements suitable to the new situation, new partners and processes of application of tax agreements, and exchanging bilateral agreement information and procedures. To promulgate new international tax administration regulations and measures regarding inspection of transfer pricing and combat of tax evasion and tax avoidance. To apply risk management methods in the international tax administration work. To implement programs on cooperation in international tax administration with tax authorities of foreign countries and international organizations in the region and the world;

h/ To build the apparatus of tax offices so as to have adequate powers and capacity to proactively implement the tax laws after the model of combining function-based tax administration with subject-based tax administration in conformity with the application of e-tax and automated risk management; to continue reorganizing the apparatus of provincial, district and regional tax offices to meet requirements of the centralized tax administration in order to improve operation performance  of tax offices; to study the establishment of sections to carry out a number of tax investigation activities at tax offices, and consolidate tax inspection and examination sections, internal examination sections, international tax administration sections, tax declaration, accounting and statistics management sections, large taxpayers management sections, and tax administration sections for small- and medium-sized enterprise, business household and individual tax administration sections after the model of function-based administration combined with subject-based administration and, at the same time, additionally supply human resources to meet modern tax administration requirements according to international practices. To strengthen operation of the Vietnamese Tax College in order to raise the capacity for training human resources for the tax sector. To build a rationally structured contingent of tax officers meeting the law-specified criteria on occupational titles, working positions and qualifications framework who will become more professional, specialized and uncorrupted to meet modern tax administration requirements and suit the international integration trend, including a pool of leading experts with high professional qualifications and experience in the field of tax administration;

i/ To develop an integrated and centralized information technology system to meet requirements on processing and provision of information for the tax administration and direction and administration by tax offices, and provide e-services to taxpayers. To build an accurate and sufficient tax database to promptly and efficiently assist in risk management, proceeding to apply an automatic mechanism for systematic cross-checking of information provided by third parties in order to detect contents with potential risks likely to cause errors in tax declaration dossiers; to build information technology infrastructure platforms for application of techniques to assist inspection and examination activities; to complete the connection of the tax sector’s database with the national population database and databases of state management agencies and related parties. To apply new technological advances to automatically operate tax administration processes and analyze big data to serve the formulation of policies, estimation of revenue amounts, communications among and assistance for taxpayers, tax risk management, compliance management, and tax inspection, examination and investigation, etc. To build advanced, modern and complete information technology infrastructure facilities and equipment to ensure uninterrupted and efficient operation, information security and data confidentiality;

k/ To implement the financial management mechanism and state payroll associated with the task of budget revenue collection and based on working positions to serve the reform and modernization of the tax sector and guarantee incomes for tax officers. To modernize working offices of tax offices, create a synchronous, professional and efficient working environment, and ensure favorable and long-term working conditions for tax officers, meeting modern tax administration requirements and needs of persons conducting tax transactions.

IV. FUNDS FOR IMPLEMENTATION OF THE STRATEGY

Funds for the implementation of the Strategy and schemes on implementation of the Strategy will come from the funding source for modernization of the tax sector.

V. RESPONSIBILITY TO ORGANIZE THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE STRATEGY

1. The Ministry of Finance shall:

a/ Assume the prime responsibility for organizing the implementation of the Strategy;

b/ Guide and urge other ministries, and agencies and localities to formulate, and organize the implementation of, programs and contents related to the Strategy within the ambit of their functions and tasks;

c/ Assume the prime responsibility for, and coordinate with related ministries and localities in, examining the implementation of the Strategy; and every year and once every 5 years organize preliminary review and evaluation of and draw experience from the implementation of the Strategy;

d/ Assume the prime responsibility for, and coordinate with related agencies in, proposing the Prime Minister to decide on adjustments to objectives and contents of the Strategy in case of necessity.

2. The Ministry of Planning and Investment shall assume the prime responsibility for, and coordinate with the Ministry of Finance in, balancing and allocating annual public investment funds in accordance with the Law on the State Budget and Law on Public Investment for the implementation of the Strategy.

3. Provincial-level People’s Committees shall, within the ambit of their state management functions and tasks in their localities, coordinate with the Ministry of Finance and related agencies in directing and participating in the implementation of related contents of the Strategy in accordance with law.

Article 2. This Decision takes effect on the date of its signing.    

Article 3. Ministers, heads of ministerial-level agencies, heads of government-attached agencies, and chairpersons of provincial-level People’s Committees shall implement this Decision.-

For the Prime Minister
Deputy Prime Minister
LE MINH KHAI