The General Department of Taxation has widely used electronic invoices from cash registers. Photo: TL

Strengthen supervision of the issuance and use of invoices

Leaders of the Hanoi Tax Department stated that they regularly direct functional departments and affiliated tax departments to strengthen management and supervision of the issuance, use, and prevention of risks of electronic invoice (e-invoices) fraud. Simultaneously, tasks are assigned to each cadre and civil servant in the management, supervision, and inspection of the issuance and use of e-invoices, to quickly prevent and reverse illegal invoice use.

At the same time, Hanoi Tax Department also strengthens the inspection, examination, and supervision of the issuance and use of e-invoices; actively collaborates with the General Department of Taxation in the process of developing and deploying a system of data analysis and risk management applications to timely review and detect violations of the law on invoices to strictly handle under the law.

Mr. Dinh Nam Thang - Director of Ninh Binh Tax Department demonstrated that to prevent invoice fraud, the tax department asked its affiliated units to strictly implement the process of managing e-invoices and managing risks of the General Department of Taxation. In addition, the Tax Department issues documents directing functional departments and regional tax departments to strengthen the management and supervision of the issuance and use of e-invoices in the area.

By strictly implementing management processes, Ninh Binh Tax Department sent 2,540 votes with a total of 15,300 invoices to tax departments of provinces and cities to request verification in 2022. The tax Department received 590 verified votes for a total of 6,850 invoices, Ninh Binh Tax Department detected and dealt with 7 businesses using 23 illegal invoices totaling more than 15.7 billion VND through inspection and management. Accordingly, Ninh Binh Tax Department collected tax arrears and fined an amount of over 365 million VND.

To improve invoice management in the area, the Dak Lak Tax Department has implemented a variety of dissemination strategies, assisting businesses, organizations, and individuals to understand and comply with regulations governing the use of invoices and e-invoices. Simultaneously, the Department has strengthened the implementation of management measures to prevent, detect, and strictly enforce legal violations in the issuance and use of invoices.

As a result, the Dak Lak Tax Department has issued notices and recommendations to taxpayers in the province to avoid using illegal invoices. Tax authorities and relevant functional branches will strictly handle issues involving the use of illegal invoices under the law.

Upgrade applications to prevent invoice fraud

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu, Deputy Director of the Information Technology (IT) Department (General Department of Taxation), stated at a training conference on IT deployment in 2023 that the IT Department has implemented a new technical infrastructure at the data center and backup data center to improve system performance.

The IT Department has also configured, refined, and upgraded the e-invoices system as of April 18, 2023, to improve data processing efficiency and notify tax authorities to actively coordinate. As a result, the processing time of data lookup requests and report mining on the new version system has increased by 30 to 50 times compared to the previous version. The average time for mining a report is currently between 1 and 5 seconds, with the longest processing time being 3 minutes (depending on the mining data range).

Simultaneously, the General Department of Taxation has expanded the scope of exploitation of e-invoices data; extended the duration of exploitation of three reports (in the form of invoice statements) from one month to one year, including statistical reports of service invoices sold by deduction method; statistical reports on service invoices sold by the direct method; statistical report of purchased service invoices, thereby effectively serving tax management.

Mr. Dang Ngoc Minh, Deputy Director General of the General Department of Taxation, stated that the task of deploying IT applications in the tax sector remains challenging and urgent, requiring the immediate and synchronous participation of tax authorities at all levels.

As a result, Mr. Minh requested that, during the period 2023-2025, tax authorities at all levels continue to promote the nationwide implementation of e-invoices, particularly those initiated from cash registers; and continue to upgrade the applications to meet the new e-invoices policies. Furthermore, it is necessary to develop a database of e-invoices and implement solutions and tools to exploit, analyze and synthesize data for the inspection, examination, and management of tax risks.

"To achieve the aforementioned goals, tax authorities at all levels must increase their responsibility and raise the heads' awareness. The IT Department needs to specify the IT tasks implemented each year, in which the responsibilities of each unit are assigned, for the General Department of Taxation to approve as a basis for implementation. Tax departments must be proactive and creative in implementing IT tasks. Tax departments must not carry out the tasks as “a perfunctory formality”. It is vital for them to base on the specific situation of each locality and available resources to effectively implement the digital transformation of tax branches; consider digital transformation as a driving force and objective to increase state budget revenue", emphasized Mr. Minh.

must be based on the specific situation of each locality and available resources to effectively implement the digital transformation of tax branches.

The Deputy General Director of the General Department of Taxation also requested that the IT Department should promptly record and submit to the General Department for replication of successful and effective implementation models at tax authorities at all levels for other tax departments and sub-departments to learn and follow.