46 cross-border service providers pay taxes of $78 mln in Jan-Feb

Vietnam's General Department of Taxation collected VND1,852 billion ($78.06 million) in taxes from 46 cross-border service providers, including Facebook, Google, Tik Tok and Youtube, in the first two months of the year.

Since the deployment of an online tax payment portal for cross-border service suppliers in March 2022, tax collection has reached VND3,700 billion ($155.95 million), the General Department of Taxation added in its review of January-February.

Cross-border foreign enterprises are those without permanent establishments in Vietnam and that provide e-commerce and other services to Vietnamese businesses and individuals. Earlier, they had to rely on an agent or third party to declare and pay taxes.

As many as 46 have registered to pay taxes via the web portal. Those that derive income from Vietnam can register, declare and pay tax through the portal without submitting physical documents to Vietnamese tax authorities.

Key names include tech giants like Microsoft, Samsung, Huawei, and Apple; service providers like Facebook, Google,TikTok, Netflix, Spotify and Zoom; gamemaker Blizzard Entertainment; among others.

Overall, the tax sector collected VND325,780 billion ($13.73 billion) in the first two months of this year, up 16.7% year-on-year and fulfilling 23.7% of the whole-year target. However, the February figure dropped 12.7% year-on-year to VND105,200 billion ($4.43 million).

In the two-month period, the sector conducted 3,596 inspections and checked 41,844 tax profiles, proposing fines of VND10,151 billion ($427.86 million), up 162% year-on-year. Of this, VND1,339 billion ($56.44 million) was collected. Besides, tax authorities collected VND8,313 billion ($350.39 million) in tax arrears.

The tax authority added that Vietnam had 886,442 operating businesses as of end-February, up by 108 from end-2022.

Regarding taxes for the e-commerce sector, the department said it has collected data of 53,585 individual sellers and 16,003 institutional sellers on 280 platforms, featuring 15.92 million transactions worth VND5,500 billion ($231.82 million).