With over 30 years of experience in implementing information technology (IT) applications in tax administration and 13 years of providing online public services, the Taxation IT system has developed comprehensively, IT has been applied in all stages of tax management process, contributes to building a modern, effective and efficient Taxation of being highly recognized and appreciated by organizations, businesses, individuals and the whole society.
Photo: Quang Minh
Implementing the National Digital Transformation program to 2025, with orientation to 2030 approved by the Government in Decision No. 749/QD-TTg dated June 3, 2020, over the past years, the Taxation has made great efforts in tax management reform and modernization, from perfecting legal environment to developing infrastructure, providing electronic tax services in the direction of integration, centralization, meeting the requirements of e-Government, toward Digital Government. Considering serving people and businesses as core direction, the Taxation sector has been implementing many IT application projects and tasks in tax management and comprehensive digital transformation.
The General Department of Taxation determines the strategic goal is to provide electronic services and support tools for people and businesses, help taxpayers participate in digital transformation process.
Over the past time, the General Department of Taxation has implemented the Government's resolutions targeted to reducing administrative procedures, simplifying regulations on business activities, building e-Government, facilitating taxpayers. In the 9 months of 2022, the General Department of Taxation has submitted to the Ministry of Finance to issue 03 decisions announcing the abolition of 114 administrative procedures and the enforcement of 47 new administrative procedures. On basis of the Decision on announcing administrative procedures, the General Department of Taxation has completed the implementation of 103/234 online public services at levels 3 and 4 and integrated 97 online public services at levels 3 and 4 on the National Public Service Portal.
The General Department of Taxation keeps maintaining unified system of 479 information channels to support taxpayers from the General Department of Taxation to 63 provincial departments and 413 sub-departments, operating regularly, continuously and smoothly 24/7. In 2022 (by the end of September 2022), the system received and replied to 4,765 questions, reaching 90.1% out of the total number of questions to be answered in the period.
Developing applications to serve people and businesses
Defining digital transformation is only really successful when each citizen and business actively participates in and enjoys benefits of digital transformation, the Taxation has been implementing many solutions to promote reforming, applying IT, modernizing tax administration, specifically: On November 21, 2021, the General Department of Taxation officially deployed electronic invoices in phase 1 in 06 provinces and cities of Ha Noi. Noi, Ho Chi Minh City, Quang Ninh, Hai Phong, Phu Tho and Binh Dinh.
On April 21, 2022, the Prime Minister announced the deployment of electronic invoice nationwide. By the end of June 30, 2022, the General Department of Taxation has completed the implementation of e-invoices for 100% of businesses, organizations, business households and individuals subject to tax declaration method under the Tax Administration Law. By the end of September 2022, total number of e-invoices received and processed by taxation authorities reached 1.6 billion. The implementation of e-invoices contributes to promoting e-commerce and digital business development in line with global trend, bringing common benefits to society (such as: saving costs of printing, storage, resources and environmental protection, ...), creating a transparent and equal business environment for businesses, and also promoting digital transformation in businesses and state management agencies, especially taxation authorities.
The General Department of Taxation has completed the implementation of electronic tax declaration, payment and refund nationwide. 99% out of total over 870,000 enterprises have used e-tax declaration, payment and refund services. The Taxation’s promotion on electronic tax services implementation to support searching information on tax liability, tax declaration and tax payment anytime and anywhere facilitates people while contributing to social contact limitation in the context of Covid-19 epidemic and promoting non-cash payments.
On March 21, 2022, the General Department of Taxation officially announced the Electronic Tax application for mobile devices (e-Tax Mobile). Accordingly, taxpayers can authenticate e-Tax mobile account registration by verifying information on phone number, account number and ID number/citizen identity card number on the bank's system instead of taking such procedures directly at tax offices. As of September 27, 2022, there were 171,871 downloads, installations, and uses of e-Tax Mobile application. There were 74,765 transactions with a total amount of over VND 320 billion (86 VND billion successfully paid). E-tax services on mobile devices will be further developed to support business households and individual taxpayers.
Also on March 21, 2022, the General Department of Taxation officially announced the Portal for Foreign Providers without a business address in Vietnam. Foreign Providers can send dossiers, search in formation, receive tax authorities' notices on tax codes, tax amounts incurred according to declarations, tax payment code to simplify information about tax payments, and support taxpayers easily make tax payment anytime and anywhere. As of September 30, 2022, 36 foreign providers have registered and declared tax successfully. Of which, 06 large foreign providers (Meta (Facebook), Google, Microsoft, TikTok, Netflix, Apple) covering 90% of market share on e-commerce business services on cross-border digital platforms in Vietnam have conducted tax registration, declaration and payment in Vietnam with a total tax paid of tens of millions of USD, EUR, about 1,200 billion VND equivalent.
The General Department of Taxation has completed connecting the integrated system with the national population database to use citizen identification codes to authenticate individuals and organizations when carrying out administrative procedures; completed household information confirmation service and citizen information sharing service through connection channel with the Government Office; completed the implementation of receiving and processing initial tax registration documents, tax registration information change for non-business individuals through the National Service Portal connected to the national population database, proceeding to use personal identification code as taxpayer identification number. The use of personal identification code as taxpayer identification numbers helps to clarify, unify management information and data sharing with the national population database, so it ensures accurate identification of taxpayer information, minimize errors in taxpayer’s administrative procedures performing process, improve tax administration efficiency.
To the success in digital transformation of the Taxation sector, factors taking decisive role include the close attention and direction of the Government, the Ministry of Finance and the General Department of Taxation, the wide participation of the whole Taxation system with synchronous solutions from the development and completion of policy documents, professional operations, organizational structure, management processes to application of information technology in tax administration. In addition, the accompanying of people and businesses in digital transformation creates a driving force to promote the development and success of the Taxation’s digital transformation.
With the above-mentioned achievements, the General Department of Taxation was honored the Outstanding State Agency in Digital Transformation Award for 2 consecutive years of 2021-2022. The Award for Outstanding State Agency in Digital Transformation shall be driving force for the Taxation to continue to expand and deploy online public services in taxation to serve people and businesses, and at the same time promote the digital transformation in the Taxation sector in the coming period, contributing to enhance the image of the taxation authorities to people and businesses.
Digital transformation orientations in 2022-2025 period and vision to 2030
Continuing to promote the achievements gained in digital transformation in 2021-2022, in the coming period, to the strong development of Industry revolution 4.0, the Taxation sector will have many development opportunities as well as challenges. Therefore, in order to have success in digital transformation, the Taxation shall continue to provide digital tax services and electronic data to facilitate taxpayers, contributing to improving Vietnam’s ranking in terms of tax simplicity and advantages. The missions shall include:
Firstly, continuing to promote the implementation of electronic invoice software (e-invoice) to meet new policies on e-invoices, expand the construction of a connection system to receive e-invoice data generated from cash calculating machines; Building e-invoices database and implementing solutions and tools for analyzing and synthesizing data serving for tax risk management.
Secondly, building and implementing an integrated tax management system, focusing on meeting requirements on re-designing of professional processes on basis of modern architecture, applying new technologies in artificial intelligence, internet of things and big data…; Developing and providing digital tax services for taxpayers, thereby, helping to increase the experience for people and businesses.
Thirdly, implementing solutions to manage domestic e-commerce activities and cross-border digital services in the direction of centralizing management data from e-commerce trading floors and cross-border digital service providers; Building a 24/7 automatic monitoring system, stipulating the responsibility for coordination of management of e-commerce trading floors and digital service providers.
Fourthly, building a data platform for tax management and smart tax services, including: deploying a modern data management platform that supports big data and master data management; deploying data predictive and analysis models to support risk management, quality management and performance management.
Fifthly, deploying technical infrastructure to ensure safety and security for the Taxation IT system in the direction of digital transformation (technical infrastructure foundation architecture is transformed into service-oriented, cloud computing technology trends, developing Internet of Things infrastructure and applying new digital technologies in building IT applications and services for tax administration).
With the motto of taking taxpayers as the center for serving, the successful implementation of the above tasks will bring great efficiency in tax administrative procedures reform, contributing to accelerating digital transformation process in the Taxation sector in particular and the national digital transformation strategy in general.
(Thu Hằng)