Laws of Vietnam

The system of tax legal documents of our State has adequately and specifically provided for preferential policies towards various branches and domains. Yet, recently, some ministries, ministerial-level agencies and agencies attached to the Government (hereafter called the ministries and agencies for short) have elaborated and submitted to the National Assembly, the Government and the Prime Minister for promulgation legal documents on their specialized fields containing provisions on tax preferences, which are incompatible or even contradictory or contrary to the provisions of the current tax laws and ordinances, thus leading to the inconsistency and complexity of tax policy system. The tax preference provisions in specialized legal documents as mentioned above have been made on the basis of requirements of only each branch, each domain, but not the overall requirements, thus limiting the objectives, requirements and principles of the tax policy system; causing unreasonability on tax preferences between branches and domains; reducing the effect of the tax policy system on investment encouragement, and production and consumption regulation; failing to ensure the level of State mobilization; causing difficulties for the implementation and adversely affecting the administrative reform in the taxation field; and creating loopholes for tax evasion.

In order to ensure the consistency and improve the effectiveness of tax legal documents, the Prime Minister requests:

1. From now on, when elaborating specialized legal documents, the ministries and agencies shall not include therein tax provisions. In cases where exist matters which have not yet been specified in tax documents, they shall propose the Ministry of Finance to provide concrete guidance or submit to the competent authorities for decision.

2. The ministries and agencies must promptly revise tax provisions in their specialized legal documents as well as in tax legislation relating to their management fields, if detecting things to be amended and supplemented, they shall propose the Ministry of Finance to submit them to the competent authorities for consideration and decision.

3. The People’s Committee of the provinces and centrally-run cities shall direct their attached provincial/municipal services and bodies to, through the practical application of tax provisions in legal documents in their respective localities, propose to the Ministry of Finance issues that need to be amended, supplemented or annulled to suit the situation.

4. The Ministry of Finance shall have to assume the prime responsibility and coordinate with the ministries and agencies in revising tax provisions in legal documents and guiding localities in implementing Point 3 of this Directive. In the second quarter of 2001, the Ministry of Finance shall take initiative in working out their own agenda and announce the contents of specific working sessions with other ministries and agencies in order to complete the revision in the third quarter of 2001. After synthesizing the revision results and the proposals of the ministries, agencies and localities, the Ministry of Finance shall report such to the Prime Minister on the fourth quarter of 2001.

5. The ministers, the heads of the ministerial-level agencies, the heads of agencies attached to the Government, and the presidents of the provincial/municipal People’s Committees shall have to strictly implement this Directive.

For the Prime Minister
Deputy Prime Minister
NGUYEN TAN DUNG