It is expected that commercial centres, supermarkets, restaurants, and pharmacies will use electronic invoices generated by cash registers and connected to tax authorities from July 1 next year.

The Ministry of Finance is collecting comments on a draft circular guiding the implementation of a number of articles of the Tax Management Law 2019 and Decree 123/2020 regulating invoices and documents.

The drafting agency clearly stipulates the use of e-invoices for organisations and individuals, excluding households, doing business in the commercial centres, including supermarkets, restaurants, hotels, pharmacies, entertainment services, and consumer goods retailers.

E-invoices generated from cash registers would connect to an electronic data system with the tax authorities who are issued codes according to the standards of the General Department of Taxation.

In particular, the General Department of Taxation is responsible for developing standards and formats for the data collection of electronic invoices generated from cash registers.

The Department of Taxation is responsible for exploiting the database of e-invoices created to direct and control the sub-departments of taxation in tax administration for business households and individuals.

The sub-departments of taxation is responsible for exploiting the database of electronic invoices to control the declaration of revenue of business households and individuals, ensuring compliance with the cost factors in the tax declaration period.

Regarding technical factors, the draft circular said that the data supply system with the General Department of Taxation must be connected continuously 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Service downtime shall not exceed 24 hours per year.

Connecting cash registers with tax authorities is considered as one of the solutions to prevent tax loss and help transparency in management, especially for small businesses.

Accordingly, these business households are not imposed by the tax authority. They set the revenue as well as the payable tax amount but will pay tax according to their actual revenue.

The total state budget revenue managed by the tax agency is estimated at VND763.8 trillion (US$33.2 billion) in the first seven months of this year, up more than 13 per cent over the same period last year.

It is expected that if the above draft is approved, the circular will take effect from July 1 next year. — VNS