Prohibition of exit for 1 million dong, in recent days, the press has continuously reported that many business leaders have been banned from exit for tax debts, even with a very small amount of less than 1 million. Many people think that postponing the exit of business leaders just because 1 million dong of tax debt is a bit too much. Is it true? Let's find out in this article.
Recent cases
In the past 1 month, the Customs Sub -Departments of Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department have issued a decision to postpone exit for 12 individuals who are legal representatives of enterprises due to tax debt. It is worth noting that the postponement of exit is applied to cases of tax debt with a significant difference, regardless of the severity. Not only Ho Chi Minh City, Bien Hoa Vinh Cuu Tax Department, Dong Nai Tax Department also sent a notice of the Immigration Department, the Ministry of Public Security postponed the exit for 64 individuals who are legal representatives of tax debt enterprises. Earlier in October 2023, the Tax Department of District 7, Nha Be district, under the Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department, also asked the competent authority to ban exit for 11 individuals who were legal representatives of 11 tax debt enterprises. Besides, there are some cases when many people come to the airport to know how to postpone the exit due to tax debt. According to Mr. Nguyen Tien Dung, Deputy Director of Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department, the law allows the tax industry to send a notice of the Immigration Department of Immigration to postpone the exit of tax violators. Mr. Dung also affirmed that after these individuals pay taxes, the tax authorities will notify the Immigration Department to remove the postponement of the exit.
Is there any other measure?
Although the postponement of exit is applied to businesses that owe taxes, the reality shows a big difference in the amount of tax debt between cases where businesses owe taxes up to tens of billions of dong. While there are also businesses that owe only a few hundred thousand dong, typically the case of Director Kim representing the legal liability company of Chemical Trading Chemicals. The person proposed to postpone the exit because this enterprise owes more than VND 997,000, excluding late payment fines. In the opinion of businesses, the ultimate goal of applying sanctions for tax debt enterprises is to recover the amount of debt to the state budget. Therefore, the measure of enforcement of corporate accounts should be given a top priority. A business manager in District 7 shared that by 2023, he received a notice from District 7 Tax Department about the business of Mr. Tax Value added about 10 million VND. Tax authorities require enterprises to pay taxes within 5 days from the date of issuance of the notice, otherwise they will use the sanctions including the proposal to postpone the exit. The director said the company's accountant has completed the full tax report but forgot to pay taxes, as soon as the notice we immediately paid the tax and paid the fine. He also expressed his opinion that we did not deliberately evade taxes but due to the negligence of the professional department and had overcome immediately after receiving the notice from the tax authority. However, through this incident, I realized that the tax authorities could choose another way to recover tax debts and support businesses more effectively.
The initial tax enforcement measures include blockade of bank accounts, notifying invoices no longer valid for use. If the enterprise still does not pay taxes, after applying these measures, the tax authority must apply many other measures. Including the proposal to ban exit for the legal representative, the tax authority is the unit responsible before the law for the owner of the business banned from exit. Regarding the fact that the enterprise owes only a few million dongs to be banned from exit, the Inspector said one of the important tasks of the tax industry is to focus on recovering tax debts, ensuring revenue for the state budget. Therefore, the tax authority must apply coercive measures so that businesses are responsible for completing the budget payment. If not implementing superiors will ask questions about why the tax authority does not comply with the provisions of the law. However, the Inspector also said that the flexibility of prohibiting exit enterprises that debt tax requires policies of the State and the adjustment of tax laws.
Even a dollar tax debt is also a violation
Lawyer Nguyen Quoc Toan, Director of IAM Law Firm of Ho Chi Minh City affirmed that even a tax debt is also a violation of the law. Individuals and businesses related to overdue tax debt are subject to the same handling. According to the provisions of the law, the tax does not distinguish between rich and poor, there is no little debt or much debt but only overdue debt, that is, violations. Lawyer Toan cited the story of an American man, just because the 500 -dollar house tax was paid but forgot the accumulated interest rate. During the payment period sent to 8.41 dollars, the result was 3 years later that he was distrained the house worth $ 60,000. Lawyer Toan emphasized that more than $ 8 debt may be distrained, the principle of the US law is that not paying enough taxes in the previous year the owner of the property will be considered as tax debt. Applying in case the enterprise owes nearly 1 million dong, Lawyer Toan said that this figure sounds small at first, but if counting the interest rate of the interest rate in the past 11 years, the debt is definitely not just at 1 million dong.
Sharing the same opinion, Associate Professor Dr. Dinh Trong Thinh, Academy of Finance, Financial Economic Expert said: Tax is the highest legal provision, contributing to the state budget that each individual or enterprise has revenue and profits required. In principle, the enterprise and legal representative of that enterprise must calculate, declare and comply with the tax payment. Associate Professor Dr. Thinh explained: Simply put the decisions to postpone the exit or coercive customs related to tax debts in order to ensure the upper laws of the enterprise and entrepreneurs have set up businesses. Already a legal representative of the enterprise, it must put the element of the law on top. The tax debt notifications are sent by the management agency many times about the business. During that time, the legal representative of the unit could not help but think that the small amount of money was not worth caring. I think there should be no distinction and travel with cases of slow tax debt like this.
Who is responsible for slow tax refund?
In the context of the increasingly tight tax industry and the payment of taxes and handling of tax debts, many businesses believe that the tax authority also needs to be responsible for the delayed tax refund. Recently, Vietnam Rubber Investment Company has recently said that the enterprise has been delayed in tax refund for about 2 years, with the amount of up to nearly VND 70 billion. Even the current amount of tax refund is greater than the charter capital of the company, the business is forced to suspend operations because there is no capital to turn around. The representative of the company said that although many difficulties could not be dissolved because if the dissolution of the implementation of procedures to receive tax refund would be more and more difficult. The detention of tens of billion dong of value added tax caused businesses to miss the financial resources, unable to carry out export orders and constantly lose customers. Earlier in 2023, many wooden businesses also reflected that the value -added tax refund was difficult as in heaven.
Typically, the case of Focus Vietnam Joint Stock Company was delayed tax refund of VND 355 billion and has sent 29 documents to the tax refund periods, from June 2020 to February 2023. Some businesses say that they are contagious from businesses to hide and escape business address while the dossier of application requires verification of invoices and documents from these businesses. According to lawyer Nguyen Quoc Toan, the value -added tax refund is actually taxpayer that businesses have paid when buying domestic goods to process exports. This means that the enterprise has advanced the state budget to help, so after the enterprise meets the regulations on tax authorities, it must be responsible for repayment. However, the full meeting of the top purchase records and invoices to get tax refund is not all businesses. Therefore, the majority of documents are delayed due to failure to meet the conditions or deadlock in the process of verification of invoices and documents.
This situation is especially common in the context of the number of enterprises closed and bankrupt, up to thousands of businesses each month. Lawyer Toan said that the verification of invoices is an internal affair of the tax industry, but the tax industry must ensure the provisions of the law to settle tax refund dossiers for businesses within 40 days. The responsibility of the tax industry is not only collected, collected and timely taxes, but also responsible for fighting tax evasion and anti -tax fraud. Especially against the appropriation of the state budget through value added tax refund. If not investigated carefully for the state budget to be appropriated, the Ministry of Tax will be responsible. In fact, there is no provision for how the tax authority is delayed to be handled.