Investigating loss-reporting FDI enterprises in Vietnam
According to the General Department of Taxation, since February 2014, both Grab and Uber have reported loss, in which Grab with the capital of 20 billion VND but accumulated loss up to 938 billion VND. Specifically, total revenue in 2014, 2015 and 2016 are 1,755 trillion VND and tax amount paid is 9.535 billion VND. Through the process of investigation, the Ho Chi Minh tax department has dealt with 2.961 billion VND, in which 2,286 billion VND has been retrieved. For Uber, total revenue in 2014, 2015, 2016 and the first 6 months of 2017 is 2,706 trillion VND, and the tax amount paid by Uber is 76.877 billion VND. Through the process of checking, tax agency has requested Uber to pay an additional of 66 billion VND.
With the amount of cars and drivers increase everyday, however, these two enterprises have continuously reported loss. Notably, these are not happening at not only Uber and Grab, but also in other leading corporations such as Lotte, Metro, and Big C with high revenue but reporting loss.
According to the General Department of Taxation, in 9 months of 2017, tax agencies have carried out 57,935 turns of investigation at enterprises and reviewed 354,426 tax files at tax agencies. The amount of additional payable tax after checking is more than 11 trillion VND. In which, the amount of tax retrieved is more than 9 trillion VND; taking penalty of nearly 2 trillion VND, while the tax amount added to state budget is nearly 7 trillion VND.
In Hanoi, results from investigations at 57 enterprises showed that loss reporting was inaccurate for 74.4 billion VND; retrieving 56.8 billion VND.
Despite the effort of administrative agencies, the result in checking loss reporting, especially in FDI sector remains modest. Specifically, according to current regulation, an investigation conducted by tax agency is under 45 working days; while in complex situation, this may be longer but not over 70 working days. The Ministry of Finance said, this regulation is only appropriate for normal investigation, while for big FDI enterprises such as Metro, BigC, this period can prolong to over a year. In many cases, administrative agencies have to discuss information with foreign tax agencies, so that during the investigation process, competent authorities have to temporarily stop to wait for information exchange. With this being said, in the revised draft Law on Tax management proposed by the Ministry of Finance, it is said that the investigating process on enterprises with trans-border transactions, the period is not longer than 360 working days.
Besides, according to experts and international practice, in many countries such as Japan or Israel, tax officials have the rights to ask, check, and confiscate related documents for investigation in case the subject is showing sign of violating tax regulation.