A customer shops for goods online using Tiki. — VNS Photo Trương Vị

HÀ NỘI — The Việt Nam e-Commerce Association (Vecom) said that a number of regulations in Circular 40 were not yet feasible, which could impact activities of hundreds of thousands of individuals doing business on e-commerce floors.

The association has just released a statement on new regulations related to e-commerce in Circular 40/2021/TT-BTC, which guides value added tax, personal income tax and tax administration for business households and individuals.

The circular was issued on June 1 and will take effect from August 1 to replace Circular 92/2015/TT-BTC.

The circular stipulated that commerce trading floors are responsible for declaring and paying tax on behalf of individuals doing business selling goods and services.

The amount of tax declared or paid is based on the tax rate of each field of business.

Circular 40 had many new contents compared to the draft first published March 12, but the drafting board had not yet collected comments from stakeholders and those directly impacted, Nguyễn Ngọc Dũng, Vecom vice chairman told a meeting last week.

Representatives of some units said that the e-commerce trading floor was not an "income payer" unit. They only provide technology infrastructures to connect sellers and buyers and help them make transactions.

Therefore, they are not subjects to declare and deduct income tax of sellers according to regulations.

In addition, business individuals would have to declare and pay tax at the tax office where their business located, while e-commerce platforms might have their business locations in other provinces, said e-commerce representatives.

Therefore, the declaration and submission on behalf of the company leads to conflicts with current regulations.

Vecom also said the expected roadmap to apply the requirements to the e-commerce floors on August 1 was too short to be able to prepare the system for data collection and report to meet the requirements of the tax authority.

Representatives of e-commerce floors expressed their hope that the tax authority would clarify specific requirements and application roadmap, and at the same time discuss with e-commerce floors to understand the difficulties encountered in reality.

On June 7, Vecom sent a document to the General Department of Taxation expressing concern about the feasibility and potential impacts of the regulation.

A Tiki representative told Việt Nam News they expected the tax authority to give detailed instructions to businesses on the plan to implement the circular, including steps to be taken, implementation time of each stage, and specific dispatches on calculation methods, tax and accounting declaration forms.

Secondly, the e-commerce platform realised that it would take more time to work internally, prepare systems, infrastructures, and equipment for data collection and reports following the request of the tax authority, as well as ensuring the security of the system.

In terms of operation, e-commerce floors also needed more time to work, guide and reach agreement with their brand partners and sellers to ensure close co-ordination, accurate implementation for circular issued by the Ministry of Finance. — VNS