VCCI is concerned when e-commerce platforms have to pay taxes on behalf of sellers

According to the draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree 126 on invoices and documents being consulted, e-commerce platforms are responsible for declaring and paying tax on behalf of sellers who are business individuals. on the floor. In the middle of last year, when amending Circular 40 guiding value added tax, personal income and tax management for business households and individuals, the Ministry of Finance issued a regulation that e-commerce floors must deduct direct tax on seller sales. However, this provision was later adopted correct directionE-commerce trading floor owners only have to declare tax on behalf of business individuals if authorized by the seller in accordance with civil law.

However, commenting to the General Department of Taxation, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) said that because forcing the e-commerce platform to declare and pay tax on behalf of the seller “is not in accordance with the legal regulations on personal income, which assumes responsibility for tax declaration and payment belongs to business individuals”.

In addition, the representative agency of the business community also requested the authorities to clarify the basis for arising and the scope of representative responsibility, if the e-commerce floor on behalf of the seller declares and pays tax.

“It is not clear on what basis the representation responsibility arises, is there any order or procedure? , tax refund or not?”, VCCI raised a series of issues.

This organization also believes that, if forcing the e-commerce platform to declare and pay taxes on behalf of business individuals on the floor, there will be the risk of creating many duplicate tax collection methods. In fact, there are many households and individuals selling goods on-site (offline) and online on e-commerce platforms, such as food and beverage stores, coffee shops or accommodation businesses. e-commerce, business individuals will have to pay tax separately for this revenue (deducted by the e-commerce platform), but at the same time, business individuals have to pay tax according to the presumptive method.

The determination of flat tax (when making tax assessment) will be done through the survey of tax authorities, such as the number of customers in a day of the shop, the number of employees…

“Separating the revenue from the online business from the revenue from the offline business will become difficult because the business is carried out at the same location. Is there any overlap when collecting taxes on this business form or not? no?”, VCCI stated.

Finally, according to VCCI, forcing e-commerce platforms to declare and pay taxes on behalf of sellers can create disproportionate effects on relevant entities in e-commerce activities.

For example, e-commerce platforms and social networks. This regulation will cause a burden of compliance on the e-commerce platform, but with social networks, there is no obligation to declare and pay taxes for business individuals. Meanwhile, e-commerce through social networks is also relatively developed, as in 2020, about 57% of people surveyed said that they shop through forums and social networks. This number is equivalent to the rate of shopping on e-commerce floors.

The VCCI side also wondered whether the regulation that e-commerce floors must declare and pay tax is applicable to trading floors providing cross-border services. “If this regulation applies only to domestic exchanges, this may be a barrier of “reverse protection”, causing inequality for domestic enterprises”, VCCI said.

For these reasons, VCCI proposes to the authorities to study and evaluate the impacts and effects of forcing e-commerce platforms to declare and pay taxes to sellers to relevant groups of subjects and to affect them. competition in the e-commerce industry.

According to the draft, the e-commerce platform must provide information of the seller on the floor, such as tax code or sales revenue through the online ordering function. These regulations, VCCI said, should be considered.

Some businesses are concerned about whether they will be held responsible for the information provided to the tax authorities. The reason is, current regulations on providing information make it difficult for e-commerce platforms to ensure the accuracy of all collected tax code data.

In addition, the draft does not have provisions on information security provided. “Disclosure of information will cause great losses to exchanges, especially if other competitors can grasp these data. In which, determining the source of data leakage is a very important step. to determine the error factor in the case of information disclosure,” VCCI commented.

Mr. Minh