Cutting And Simplifying Tax Administrative Procedures: Tax Department Organizes Workshop To Gather Opinions To Accelerate Reform

Accelerating Reform, Simplifying Tax Administrative Procedures: Tax Department Organizes Workshop To Gather Opinions

In the context of the Government’s efforts to build a service-oriented, modern, effective, and efficient administration, cutting and simplifying tax administrative procedures (APs) is becoming increasingly urgent. Strictly implementing the Prime Minister’s directive in Official Dispatch No. 22/CD-TTg dated March 9, 2025, and the Government’s Resolution No. 66/NQ-CP dated March 26, 2025, on accelerating AP reform, the Tax Department identifies this as a key task requiring urgent, determined, and synchronous action.

Accordingly, this afternoon (April 21) the Tax Department organized a workshop to gather opinions on proposals for cutting and simplifying tax APs. The workshop serves as an important forum to collect contributions aimed at perfecting the reform plan, moving towards more streamlined and effective tax administrative procedures.

Accelerating Tax Ap Reform: Towards People And Businesses

Based on task requirements, the Tax Department is accelerating AP reform, modernizing tax collection management, accompanying people and businesses (DN), putting people and businesses at the service center, contributing to creating an equal and favorable business environment, and promoting production and business development.

The Tax Department focuses on specific requirements based on important directives:

Key Tasks from the Government and Ministry of Finance:
1. Official Dispatch No. 22/CD-TTg dated March 9, 2025, of the Prime Minister assigned the task of cutting and simplifying regulations and APs, “ensuring a reduction of at least 30% of AP processing time, at least 30% of business costs (compliance costs), abolishing 30% of unnecessary business conditions; implementing procedures related to businesses in an electronic environment, ensuring smoothness, seamlessness, and effectiveness.”

2. The Government’s Resolution No. 66/NQ-CP dated March 26, 2025, on the Program for Cutting and Simplifying APs related to production and business activities in 2025 and 2026 sets objectives:

• 2025 Objective: Immediately cut and simplify APs related to production and business activities, ensuring the abolition of at least 30% of unnecessary investment and business conditions; reducing the processing time of APs by at least 30%, and AP compliance costs by 30%.
• 2026 Objective: Reduce AP processing time by 50%, and AP compliance costs by 50% compared to 2024; 100% of business reporting regimes to be conducted electronically; 100% of eligible APs to be performed fully online.

3. Notice No. 316/TB-BTC dated March 14, 2025, of the Minister of Finance directed the resolution of APs and provision of public services to people and businesses with the goal of reducing 30% – 40% of APs and minimizing associated costs.

Tax Department’s Objectives and Requirements for the 2025-2026 Period: The Tax Department identifies 08 tasks to be implemented:
1. Review legal normative documents to ensure comprehensive synthesis and statistics of processing time and compliance costs for APs related to production and business activities.

2. Review current tax APs to propose amendments to relevant legal normative documents, ensuring the completion of the task of cutting and simplifying APs for the 2025-2026 period.

3. Electronize tax APs to the level of full online public services (FOPS) for implementation in the electronic environment, ensuring smoothness, seamlessness, and effectiveness based on applying technology, reusing digitized information and data stored in national databases, specialized databases, and electronic interconnection.

4. Ensure that cutting and simplifying APs is well-founded, practical, and does not affect tax administration, preventing budget revenue loss and tax fraud; Ensure consistency with the tax legal system.

5. Resolutely eliminate unnecessary procedures, similar APs that do not benefit taxpayers (NNT); minimize instances where NNT must declare information multiple times when data is already available and interconnected in the databases of the tax agency and other state management agencies.

6. Cut unnecessary dossier components and information to be declared to the maximum extent; APs must be simple, clear, easy to understand, and easy to implement, creating convenience for NNT while meeting the management requirements of the tax agency, requirements for information connection with relevant state agencies, and readiness for full digitalization and automation.

7. Strongly apply information technology and automation in receiving and processing NNT dossiers.

8. Complete the results of reviewing and cutting tax APs according to the requirements and deadlines assigned by the Government and the Ministry of Finance.

Current Status Of Tax Aps And Progress In Digital Transformation

a) Current Classification of Tax APs: The current set of tax APs includes: 219 APs implemented at 03 levels: Department level (22), Regional Tax Branch level (177), Inter-District Tax Team level (139) (corresponding to the former General Department of Taxation, Tax Department, Tax Branch levels). These APs are classified into 03 levels of online public service:

• Full Online Public Service (FOPS) level APs: 134 APs, accounting for 61.2% of the total number of APs (105 APs integrated into the National Public Service Portal, reaching 48% of the total number of APs).
• Partial Online Public Service level APs: 01 AP.
• Online Information Service level APs: 84 APs.

By group, tax APs are categorized as follows: Tax declaration dossiers (49), Tax finalization dossiers (15), Tax registration dossiers (31), Taxpayer’s requests (14), Invoices, receipts (15), Tax refunds (16), Exemptions and reductions (27), Other dossiers (reports, verification, confirmation, etc.) (52).

b) Tax AP Dossier Reception Situation and Electronization Effectiveness: The annual number of tax AP dossiers received remains very large, indicating an increasing need for people and businesses to perform procedures. Simultaneously, the rate of reception via electronic format shows a clear upward trend, demonstrating the effectiveness of the digital transformation process and tax AP reform.

• The number of received dossiers increased from 22.8 million (in 2022) to over 25.5 million (in 2024).
• The number of online received dossiers has steadily increased: in 2024 alone, newly received dossiers during the period via the online method accounted for 87.9%, while in-person and postal reception was 11.9%, showing a strong shift by people and businesses towards performing APs in the electronic environment. Particularly for some high-frequency AP groups such as tax registration, tax refund, and tax declaration, the electronic rate exceeds 99%.
• The number of dossiers received in person or via postal service has decreased gradually over the years (from 5,317,294 dossiers in 2022 to 3,069,289 dossiers in 2024), demonstrating the effectiveness of reform and reducing the burden of processing APs not only for people and businesses but also for the agencies processing APs and the entire public administration apparatus.

c) Legal Normative Documents Regulating Tax APs: The current system of tax APs is primarily regulated by the following legal documents:

• Law on Tax Administration No. 38/2019/QH14 (effective from July 1, 2020).
• Decree No. 123/2020/ND-CP on electronic invoices and documents (amended and supplemented by Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP dated March 20, 2025).
• Government’s Decree No. 126/2020/ND-CP dated October 19, 2020, detailing a number of articles of the Law on Tax Administration.
• Circular No. 19/2021/TT-BTC dated March 18, 2021, guiding electronic transactions in the tax sector.  
•  
• Circular No. 40/2021/TT-BTC guiding value-added tax and personal income tax for business households and individuals.
• Circular No. 80/2021/TT-BTC dated September 29, 2021, of the Ministry of Finance guiding the implementation of a number of articles of the Law on Tax Administration concerning tax declaration, payment, and refund.  
•  
• Circular No. 86/2024/TT-BTC dated December 23, 2024, regulating tax registration.

Proposed Solutions For Cutting And Simplifying Tax Aps In The Tax Sector

Based on directives from the Government and the Ministry of Finance and analysis of the current situation, the Tax Department has comprehensively researched and evaluated the current set of APs and developed a feasible reform plan consistent with management reality and aimed at better serving people and businesses. The Tax Department proposes the following solutions for cutting and simplifying APs:

a) Comprehensive Electronization of APs:

• Fully implement 100% of full online public services for APs in the tax sector.
• Accelerate integration with the National Public Service Portal and national database systems (population, businesses, social insurance, etc.).
• Automate the process of receiving, processing, and returning results for tax procedures through modern management software systems.
• Upgrade IT applications for tax administration, enhance the reuse of digitized information, minimize the need for taxpayers to re-declare data already stored by the tax agency or other state management agencies, thereby improving processing efficiency and saving time for both people and the tax agency.

b) Cutting and Simplifying Dossier Components, Forms, and Papers:

• Comprehensively review and evaluate dossier components, forms, and papers within each tax AP to clearly identify overlapping, outdated content, or content already available in national and internal databases. Propose abolishing or replacing documents, annexes, and declarations based on reusing digitized information and data.
• Standardize the content of forms, simplify wording to be clear, easy to understand, and easy to implement; helping people and businesses perform APs quickly and conveniently.

c) Some Other Solutions:

• Implement a solution of “declare once, use many times” for business information, increasing taxpayers’ self-reliance and self-responsibility.
• Regularly review to identify shortcomings and timely propose amendments and supplements to relevant legal normative documents concerning APs to competent authorities.
• Periodically collect feedback from people and businesses on their satisfaction level with tax APs to inform improvements.

Discussion At The Workshop And Determined Implementation Plan

At the workshop, the Tax Department consulted attendees for their opinions on the overall direction of the proposed plan for cutting and simplifying tax APs in line with the spirit of the Government’s and the Ministry of Finance’s directives on AP reform for the 2025-2026 period. Representatives shared experiences in effectively implementing AP reform within the administrative system for the tax sector to learn from; suggested procedures to prioritize for reform; proposed specific reform solutions and plans; and discussed other content related to the Tax Department’s plan for cutting and simplifying tax APs.

According to Deputy Director of the Tax Department Dang Ngoc Minh, the plan for cutting and simplifying APs in the coming period by the Tax Department will continue to be implemented synchronously and decisively to ensure the completion of the task of cutting and simplifying tax APs according to the direction of the Government and the Ministry of Finance, specifically as follows:

1. Continue to comprehensively review and evaluate current APs in the tax sector to identify APs that can be cut and simplified regarding dossier components, processing workflows, and resolution time.

2. Continue to promote the application of information technology, electronization, and automation of AP resolution processes, increasing the rate of providing full online public services; enhancing interconnection and data sharing between information systems within and outside the tax sector.

3. Improve the quality of coordination between tax agencies and relevant agencies, especially in interconnected procedures and procedures requiring information verification and confirmation, to shorten dossier processing time.

4. Propose competent agencies to timely amend and supplement relevant legal provisions to implement the plan for cutting and simplifying APs and meet reform requirements.

5. Organize communication, guidance, and support for taxpayers in accessing and implementing the simplified APs; strengthen surveys and collect feedback from people and businesses to continue improving.

In his concluding remarks at the conference, on behalf of the Tax Department’s leadership, Deputy Director Dang Ngoc Minh expressed sincere gratitude for the attention, companionship, and close guidance from the Government Office (Agency for Administrative Procedure Control); the Research and Development Board for the Private Economic Sector (Board IV); the Ministry of Finance’s Office; the Ministry of Finance’s Department of Legal Affairs; the Ministry of Justice; the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI); associations and some businesses for taking the time to attend the opinion gathering workshop on the plan for cutting and simplifying APs in the tax sector. The participation and valuable contributions of the delegates are an important foundation for the tax sector to successfully achieve the goal of administrative reform, bringing practical benefits to people and businesses.