Big data to help collect tax from foreign service providers: official

Big data on e-commerce would help the tax watchdog to efficiently collect tax from foreign cross-border IT services providers, a tax official said.

Statistics showed that cross-border IT services and social network providers, including Google, Apple, Facebook, Netflix, TikTok and Microsoft, paid around VND4 trillion (US$169.5 million) in taxes in the first half of this year, compared to VND3.5 trillion for the full last year.

The tax that Vietnam collected on the providers remained modest compared to the revenue of the retail e-commerce market which reached $16.4 billion in 2022, statistics of Vietnam E-commerce and Digital Economy Agency showed.

It was estimated that Vietnam’s retail e-commerce market would expand by 25% to hit $20.5 billion this year.

On the e-commerce market, six foreign providers namely Meta (Facebook), Google, Microsoft, TikTok, Netflix and Apple, accounted for about 90% of the revenue on cross-border digital platforms in Vietnam.

In the field of digital advertising, according to Kantar Media Vietnam, the revenue on platforms such as Facebook, Youtube and TikTok reached $2.5 billion in 2023 and is forecast at $3.4 billion this year.

Nguyen Bang Thang, director of Tax Management Department of Large Enterprises, said that the tax watchdog would continue to create favorable conditions for foreign providers and domestic establishments which were seriously developing business in Vietnam. At the same time, strict punishments would be applied to violations, he stressed.

He added that the tax watchdog regularly cooperated with relevant agencies to analyze risks related to tax declaration of foreign providers and authorized organizations for handling measures. Experiences from other countries, including the U.S. and the EU, showed that the development of big data on e-commerce would be critical to ensure efficiency in tax management on cross-border platforms.

Admitting tax loss in e-commerce, Nguyen Thi Minh Huyen, deputy director of Vietnam E-commerce and Digital Economy Agency, said that the legal regulations on tax collection in the industry were still in the process of being improved.

Huyen said that a mechanism for data sharing between relevant management agencies must be raised to prevent cross-border tax loss.

According to Hoang Van Cuong, deputy of the National Assembly's Finance - Budget Committee, the focus must be placed on strengthening digital transformation to have an adequate data for easy and efficient tax management.

The Ministry of Finance targeted to increase domestic tax collection by 5-7% in 2024 with one of the focuses on enhancing the efficiency in tax collection from cross-border e-commerce.