In the next few months, tax payments for customs clearance will be made available online, round-the-clock.

This will allow enterprises to pay tax at anytime and from anywhere, provided they have internet access, said the General Department of Customs.

The department said that it planned to expand the 24/7 online tax payment scheme to all 36 commercial banks, which signed collection agreements with the General Department of Customs, in November and December.

The 24/7 online tax payment scheme had been initially piloted at five commercial banks, namely Vietcombank, Vietinbank, BIDV, MBBank and Techcombank, from late October with around 100 successful transactions in the past week.

The department’s statistics revealed that online tax payment via banks accounted for 90 per cent of the customs’ budget collection. However, many banks currently did not allow tax payments after the cut-off time, which would cause delays in customs clearance.

Luu Manh Tuong, Director of Import-Export Tax Department, said at a press conference on Tuesday, that with the implementation of 24/7 online tax payment via banks and customs clearance projects, taxpayers can make payments at anytime, even during out-of-office hours, weekends or holidays, which will help reduce the time for completing customs clearance procedures and reduce cash payments.

For example, if a batch of goods arrived at 5p.m. on Friday and the firm could not pay tax because it was past working hours, it would have to wait until next week to pay tax for customs clearance. Now, with the 24/7 online tax payment, the firm can pay tax online immediately for customs clearance. With a registered digital signature and a letter of authorization, firms can access the website, https://epayment.customs.gov.vn/epaymentportal/login, to pay tax online.

As of March, 126 major customs procedures, or 70 per cent of the sector’s procedure counts, were conducted online and 42 others are scheduled to go online by the end of this year.

From the beginning of this year to October 25, around 8.86 million files for customs clearance of 74,600 firms were handled online. — VNS