The Ministry of Finance said that the National Assembly has the right

According to the Ministry of Finance, currently gasoline is subject to 3 taxes and fees, including excise tax from 8-10% (depending on the type of gasoline, of which E5 biofuel is 8%, Ron 95 mineral gasoline is 10%). , VAT 10%, import tax 10%, normal cost, business about 8%; In addition, there is an environmental protection tax of about 2,000 VND/liter of gasoline (50% off) starting from April.

How much tax on petrol and oil?

The proportion of tax/petroleum accounts for 33.5%, of which excise tax is considered an indirect tax, which manufacturers and importers pay for the final consumers.

The special consumption tax on gasoline is equivalent to the taxing mechanism on alcohol, tobacco, automobiles, etc., in order to navigate the market and limit consumption.

The Ministry of Finance said that excise tax is the competence of the National Assembly, therefore, if you want to change it, it must be decided by this agency. According to regulations, the National Assembly can consider adjusting the Special Consumption Tax if this issue is in the working schedule of the National Assembly, usually every 6 months.

Regarding international practices, according to the Ministry of Finance, many countries are also taxing, or cash per liter of petrol, including Germany, France, the Netherlands, China, Korea, Australia… In ASEAN, Thailand impose a tax of 6.50 baht/liter for mineral gasoline, 5.85 baht/liter for 95E10 gasoline; Cambodia applies a 25% tax rate, Singapore collects 0.41 SGD/liter; Laos has the highest collection of 39%.

In essence, gasoline tax revenue is a relatively large proportion of budget revenue, to change it needs to be considered and approved by the National Assembly.

From an expert’s point of view, it is necessary to reduce or eliminate the Special Consumption Tax in light of the economic conditions and objective requirements, and may even have more spillover effects than the current tax collection. However, when the apparatus does not want to change, this tax revenue still accounts for a large part of the budget revenue, it takes a lot of courage to change.

Time to ditch the excise tax on gasoline!

“In the past, we used to think too much about eliminating the excise tax on refrigerators and air conditioners… but after removing the tax, we still have another source of additional revenue. Now, let’s boldly give up on gasoline. oil, especially biofuel E5, the future is E10… or green cars to stimulate economic transformation. It should not be considered easy revenue for the budget to satisfy the policy obtained”, the expert said. economics says.

Lawyer Truong Thanh Duc, Director of ANVI Law Firm, said: It is necessary to eliminate the excise tax on petrol and oil because we consider petrol as an essential commodity, an input of industries and fields, but in Why this tax? Petrol is not a luxury item, and consumption is not encouraged such as alcohol and tobacco, so it is unreasonable to navigate and limit consumption.

With the same opinion, economist Pham Chi Lan affirmed: The special consumption tax on gasoline was previously to limit imports and trade balance deficit when the economy was still small; This second tax is to protect the environment, limit vehicles, machinery and vehicles that use too much petrol and cause environmental pollution, and promote conversion.

Ms. Lan analyzed: We have a solution for both of these tax bases. The scale of Vietnam’s economy ranks 2-3 in ASEAN, the total import-export turnover has reached nearly 670 billion USD/year (2021), the size of the large economy requires an open mechanism for different industries and sectors. key areas and the elimination and reduction of excise tax on gasoline is advisable.

Secondly, on the environment, we agree that the heavy use of petroleum causes environmental pollution, but instead of taxing high excise taxes, they switch to taxing the environment, taxing vehicles and machines that use a lot of money. material. Vietnam has also taxed the environment.

“The role of the Special Consumption Tax to direct consumption and transform technology, but try to ask if there are any statistics or studies after decades of research on the effectiveness of this policy to make adjustments accordingly. No one wants to give up using a lot of petrol and oil to pay a lot of money and incur high costs for goods. Therefore, it’s time for us to think differently, do differently,” said Ms. Lan.

In addition to the issue of taxes and fees, which have a strong impact on each liter of gasoline, the State’s petroleum storage and circulation reserves are issues that greatly affect market prices and supply and demand.

Recently at the National Assembly, Minister of Industry and Trade Nguyen Hong Dien revealed that currently, the petroleum reserve mechanism, the national reserve system does not have its own warehouse, so they are all assigned to businesses, this is an unreasonable problem. Mr. Dien also said: The time to store petrol and oil of the enterprise is only 5-7 days.

Mr. Nguyen Bich Lam, former Director General, General Statistics Office, Ministry of Planning and Investment, only 5-7 days of petroleum storage is too little compared to international practices, good storage will ensure a stable economy. stable and unaffected by the unpredictable movements of the current world oil price.

According to experts, there are very few oil storage hubs because their operations follow market rules and are efficient in accounting. They import according to world prices, futures and orders, so they can increase their imports during the downtrend of petrol and push them out when retail prices increase. In principle, businesses that reserve petrol and oil, but quite a bit, will often sell strongly when gasoline prices increase.