What does the Ministry of Finance say?

E-commerce platforms will have to pay taxes on behalf of businesses. (Illustrative image: VnEconomy) — E-commerce platforms will have to pay taxes on behalf of businesses (illustrative image).

The Ministry of Finance stated that, in the era of developing the digital economy, e-commerce has become widespread with increasingly diverse forms.

The tax authorities have introduced various solutions to strengthen tax management for e-commerce business activities.

This includes a proposed solution to amend and supplement regulations to require organizations that own e-commerce platforms with online ordering functions to be responsible for declaring and paying taxes on behalf of individuals doing business on those platforms.

According to the Ministry of Finance, this solution contributes to administrative procedure reform and reduces the number of tax declaration points.

At the same time, overall, it will reduce administrative compliance costs for society as a whole because instead of tens of thousands of individuals directly filing taxes with the tax authorities, only one point of contact, the e-commerce platform, will be needed to file and pay taxes on their behalf.

Furthermore, e-commerce platforms with online ordering functions have full access to information about buyers; information about successful sales transactions; and information about revenue and expenses incurred through the platform by organizations and individuals providing goods and services.

Therefore, e-commerce platforms can handle tax declaration and tax payment on behalf of individuals providing goods and services through the platform.

The Ministry of Finance stated that the General Department of Taxation will continue to study this solution to ensure its feasibility, effectiveness, and conformity with international practices.

Previously, at the National Assembly session on May 23, Minister Ho Duc Phoc stated that currently 93 foreign technology organizations and companies such as YouTube, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., have declared and paid taxes through the Ministry's cross-border e-commerce tax payment portal, totaling 14,500 billion VND.

According to the head of the finance and information sector, this year the Ministry is focusing on collecting taxes from domestic e-commerce platforms and online businesses.

Accordingly, the Ministry has connected the tax authority's database to the Ministry of Public Security 's population database and coordinated with the State Bank of Vietnam to control payments in e-commerce.

The Ministry also requested the State Bank of Vietnam to strengthen cashless payments. Through this, tax revenue in this sector will be collected. The Minister reported that in the past two quarters, nearly 50,000 billion VND has been collected from these transactions.

TH (according to VTC News)

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