General Department of Taxation accelerates collection from cross-border platforms

Dozen thousands of online businesses have yet to fulfil their tax obligation

As of the end of 2020, about 15,000 YouTube channels in Vietnam have earned advertising revenue. However, only 30 per cent of them (about 5,000 units) have been paying tax, following the latest data published by the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC).

Hanoi Department of Taxation said that for the cases which have purposefully delayed registering and declaring tax, the authority will issue sanctions as per the stipulated regulations, and even prosecute them.

While tax inspections have been ongoing for years, little has been reported in terms of results. According to Ta Thi Phuong Lan, deputy head of Tax Administration for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises and Individuals under the GDT, the collected sum has grown over the years but remains small compared to the actual number of these individuals.

While previously, individuals were responsible for registering and declaring tax on their own. However, with the system’s spectacular failure, the latest Decree No.126/2020/ND-CP guiding the Law on Tax Administration, the authorised partners of Google and Facebook have to register and declare tax on their behalf.

Meanwhile, businesses and individuals who directly received money from Google and Facebook have to fulfil this obligation by themselves. 

Lan said that to date, the authority has yet to figure out the actual number of Facebook and Google’s partners in Vietnam. “The new regulation took effect on December 5, so we still have to wait until the next term of tax declarations on January 20 for specific statistics.”