Secretary Hoang Trung Hai: Good administrative reform requires service initiatives

After listening to reports by concerned agencies at the meeting, the municipal Party Secretary praised the results which the Tax Department of Hanoi has achieved with, he said, many creative and flexible methods.
 
Through  innovations in administrative procedures and facilitating enterprises,  the city’s Department of Taxation collected a revenue of 107,785 billion VND or 5 billion USD, approximately 57.5% of the yearly estimation  and a 18.4% increase in comparison with that of the same period last year. The handling of arrears and enforcement measures have been conducted drastically according to regulations and directions of the Ministry of Finance and the City.

In addition, tax liabilities are classified according to the performance of enterprises to ensure their payment and production. In comparison to December 31 of 2016, the tax liabilities have reduced.

Thanks to the improvement  of online tax declaration and  payment, over 98% enterprises have declared their taxes online and over 95% tax amount have been paid with electronic means, thus reducing the time and expense for tax payers and tax authorities.
  With regard to tax inspection and budget loss prevention, the Department of Taxation has completed 11,444 examinations in the first seven months of 2017, completing  62.8% of the plan and 98.6% more than that of  the same period of 2016. At the same time, the Department has enforced inspection decisions and fine late tax payment with an amount worth 1,503 billion VND (roughly 50 million USD), an increase of 12.6% in comparison with the same period of last year. In this way, the Department has managed to mitigate 1,485 billion VND of tax loss and of 117 billion VND in deduction.
 
The  Secretary of the municipal Party Committee stated that administrative reform is both advantage but also challenge to the tax agencies. “If the department fails to determine the service targets, it will lag behind in the reform. No matter how much effort we make, complants will still arise. So self-improvement is a continual process and we have to improve the qualification of tax officers”, the Party Secretary said. 
 
In relation to the upcoming tasks, the Secretary of the Party Committee requested the Hanoi Department of Taxation to pay  attention to anti-corruption tasks and preventing negative effects by  enhancing tax officers  morality. The Department also has to pay attention to the capacity building for  staffs to meet the requirements of international integration.
  According to the Secretary of the Hanoi municipal Party Committee, despite the improvement of private sector operation and investment environment, there remain challenges for the revenue collection from enterprises as so far, the  majority of revenue still comes  from land use charges. Therefore, if Hanoi fails to help businesses to thrive, it will be difficult to collect taxes.  In addition, business households are the untapped potential for tax collection. It’s necessary to help them make business registration,” the Secretary said.
 
With regard to the cooperation among agencies to prevent and  deal with violation in tax procedures,  the Secretary requested a smooth and efficient in the process of information exchange,”Hanoi city agencies should share information to handle violations. How a business failing to comply with tax obligations is still granted construction permit? We have to apply  strict measures to send a clear message to enterprises on the responsibility of fulfilling their obligation to the State” – the Secretary emphasized.