Decree 51 Providing Most Favorable Conditions for Tax Payers

Cao Anh Tuan, Head of the General Department of Taxation, said the circular regulates that enterprises set up in industrial, economic, processing zones, high tech zones, state-owned units that conduct production and business activities, enterprises with registered capital of under VND10 billion and above; organizations and individuals that have been granted tax code and not yet punished for violations of taxation with fines of from VND20 million and above within one year from the announcement date are allowed to print invoices. Under the regulation, the country has about 350, 000 such enterprises.

 

According to Vu Thi Mai, Vice Head of the General Department of Taxation, if in the past, buyers had to suffer nuisance of a series of long procedures to have tax code stamped on their voices, now under the Decree 51, enterprises are allowed to design model and print voices by themselves. They can add information related to their firms such as logo, slogan on invoices to advertise their firms. In addition, enterprises will send announcement and models of invoices to taxation agencies within ten days before issuing.

 

Assessing the decree 51, Tran Huu Huynh, Head of the Legal Department of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that permitting enterprises to print invoices and other similar papers by themselves are among the commitments by the Ministry of Finance to reform administrative procedures of the taxation in order to facilitate maximally tax payers in general and enterprises in particular.

 

According to representatives of many enterprises, although taxation agencies manage invoices tightly, invoice fraud and purchasing invoices illegally (particularly added value invoices) is existing in almost all of localities and tends to become more and more complicated. Thus, that enterprises are allowed to print invoices by themselves may make the matter worse if there is an absence of tight management. Particularly if enterprises print e-invoices, they can face legal suits if their invoices are forged. According to representative of the VLC law firm, the management of invoices under the new regulation is relatively open, thus raising the risk of tax evasion if there are no effective management measures.  

According to Doctor Nguyen Van Tuyen from the Hanoi Law University, it is necessary to build common principles on building invoices. Every organization and individual that sells goods and provides services has rights of deciding kinds of invoices (added value invoice, export invoices…) and manners of producing invoices (printing by themselves, offering to print or buying from taxation agencies). The state should not limit organizations and individuals to create and use invoices as defined in Item 3, Article 5 of the draft circular. Because in fact, some organizations and individuals can sell lots of different goods and services and requires for different invoices.  

Tuyen also emphasized the need of clearer regulations of the legal validity of invoices and the time of the legal validity arisen because there may be mistakes between the legal validity of invoices which have been declared but not yet used with those have been issued and used for purchasing goods and services.

 

Lawyer Vu Xuan Tien, Chairman of the membership council of the Vietnam VFAM consulting firm, said the regulation that only enterprises with registered capital of over VND10 billion are allowed to print invoices is not suitable. In fact, it is not the case that enterprises with more capital will use more invoices and vice versa. Many firms operating in the pharmaceutical field often have registered capital of only VND5 billion and they use dozens of bill notebooks monthly while those operating in the real estate field with registered capital of VND100 billion each use one or two notebooks.      

Tien added the regulation that it is not proper that address of sellers must be printed on invoices because almost all enterprises have to rent offices. If enterprises change place, meaning that they must replace all printed invoices. Tien suggests only name and tax code are needed on invoices, adding that enterprises can carve their address and affixed it on invoices or print from computer as issuing. By doing that, enterprises will still use invoices in case of changing their office place.       

According to Mai, enterprises need to study carefully the Decree to choose manner of printing invoices; designing model. On schedule, detailed regulations on invoice model are provided in a circular issued at the end of August by the Ministry of Finance. She added in September, enterprises will be trained on the issue. The moves should be carried out as soon as possible to facilitate enterprises’ operation.