The discussed legal documents consists of the Personal Income Tax (PIT) Law, the Value Added Tax (VAT) Law, the Corporate Income Tax (CIT) Law, and the Special Consumption Tax Law, which are all policies that were enacted not long ago. Some, such as the PIT Law, haven’t even fully taken effect yet, but are already being presented to the NA for amendments.
This stark reality underscores that the imperative isn’t merely a rapid revision, but the urgent implementation of sensible, thoroughly scrutinized, unambiguously clear, and highly stable legislative frameworks.
During this particular revision, the proposal to alter the tax-exempt revenue threshold for business households and individual entrepreneurs has garnered profound attention. Instead of retaining the current threshold of VND500 million (US$19,000) per year as stipulated by the existing PIT Law and the amended VAT Law, the draft proposes delegating the detailed regulations to the Government, thereby omitting a specific numerical figure within the legislation itself.
Presenting the verification report on the draft, Chairman of the NA’s Economic and Financial Committee Phan Van Mai stated that, fundamentally, the Committee concurs with the absolute necessity of amending tax laws to bolster the economy. Nevertheless, the verifying agency also raised numerous issues demanding meticulous clarification.
Regarding the entrustment of authority to the Government to determine the PIT and VAT revenue thresholds, the agency frankly pointed out that the Government’s proposal lacks a concrete roadmap indicating an intended increase or decrease relative to the current threshold, and fails to quantify the specific impact on state budget revenues.
Notably, concerning this very issue, late last year, when the NA discussed the draft PIT Law, numerous delegates, experts, as well as the community of business households argued that the VND500-million annual threshold remained excessively low and incongruent with practical realities.
After supposedly absorbing these critiques, the drafting agency stubbornly maintained this tier, citing “meticulous calculations.” Yet, after merely three months of application, an amendment is now being proposed. This inevitably prompts a critical inquiry into whether the preceding preparation and impact assessment were genuinely as thorough as claimed.
In practical reality, over a remarkably short recent period, the implementation of tax policies has suffered from contradictory interpretations at the grassroots level, inflicting direct hardships upon business households.
Recently, the Tax Department was compelled to issue a definitive notice affirming that businesses with an annual revenue below VND500 million can still legally issue electronic invoices if required, simultaneously mandating the immediate revocation and cancellation of previously issued penalty notices.
The root cause of this fiasco was that grassroots tax agencies recently issued alarming notices demanding business households earning under VND500 million annually cease utilizing electronic invoices immediately, threatening severe sanctions. Some were even forced to sign commitments abandoning them.
Meanwhile, since the new decree took effect last June, countless businesses spent millions of VND procuring point-of-sale hardware and software. Just as they were accustomed to this mandated system, they were abruptly ordered to halt. This erratic bureaucratic approach plunged them into a distressing difficulty, forbidding invoice issuance while partners require them, thereby disabling commercial operations and losing clients.
The core dilemma here transcends the mere necessity of amending a document. It exposes the grim reality that a single regulation can be misconstrued and inconsistently executed upon reaching the grassroots level. Some jurisdictions permit households to self-assess their annual revenue and proceed with invoicing, whereas others arbitrarily utilize first-quarter revenue to unjustly conclude a lack of eligibility, blatantly ignoring that the VND500-million threshold applies to the entire fiscal year.
The public’s yearning for a simplistic, comprehensible, and universally consistent tax system is profoundly legitimate. This current legislative revision presents a critical window of opportunity for drafting agencies to comprehensively absorb taxpayers’ feedback, meticulously prepare their impact assessments, and guarantee that once a law is enacted, it’s accompanied by unified guidance as well as seamlessly executed from the top down.
Taxation functions as an indispensable regulatory mechanism, but it simultaneously serves as a barometer for governance quality. To empower citizens to conduct business with absolute peace of mind, the urgent implementation of sensible, crystal-clear, and enduringly stable tax policies is paramount. This constitutes the very bedrock for fostering robust and unequivocally sustainable economic growth.
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