People pay tax at a branch of Ha Noi Tax Department. — VNA/VNS Photo Hoang Hung

In order to prevent fraud and the illegal use of e-invoices, the General Department of Taxation (GDT) has coordinated with relevant authorities to strictly handle organisations and individuals using illegal invoices.

These organisations aim to legitimise costs to reduce the amount of tax payable or to legalise purchased goods on the market to evade taxes.

Vu Manh Cuong, director of the GDT’s Tax Audit and Inspection Department, said that offenders set up many enterprises at the same time, or acquire enterprises that have been operating for a while, then registered or changed the information of the legal representative to issue invoices for a short time and stop working to avoid inspections.

"During the operation, these enterprises change their addresses continuously, when they know that the tax authorities have included them in the inspection and examination plan, they carry out procedures to temporarily suspend their operation," Cuong told Voice of Viet Nam (VOV) online newspaper.

Le Thi Duyen Hai, director of the Tax Declaration and Refund Department, said that in the process of monitoring the management of business registration and tax registration, cases which were handled by police agencies, tax agencies, and other agencies revealed that there were businesses established not for business purposes, but only for the purpose of selling invoices for profit.

GDT would urge and speed up the implementation of electronic invoices with the tax agency's code initiated from cash registers nationwide, said Pham Quang Toan, head of the GDT's IT Department.

It would also continue to support tax departments to organise the selection of lucky invoices to encourage and raise the awareness of buyers when using e-invoices in commercial transactions, he added.

At the same time, the department will upgrade the application of e-invoices to meet the decentralisation and exploitation of e-invoice data of tax authorities; upgrade and deploy risk analysis application to meet invoice risk management criteria according to GDT’s Decision No 78/QD-TCT dated February 2 this year on promulgating a set of evaluation criteria indicators, identifying taxpayers showing signs of risk in the management and use of invoices.

GDT would deploy an application to compare e-invoice data with value-added declarations in May; install configuration, and manage technical infrastructure for risk analysis according to new technology of the Risk Management Board to perform risk analysis according to artificial intelligence technology, Toan added.

Director of the GDT’s Tax Audit and Inspection Department Vu Manh Cuong affirmed that the tax agency would closely cooperate with the police investigation agency and relevant authorities such as customs and banks to strictly handle violations; as well as proactively coordinate with the police agency in investigating or transferring the dossier for handling according to regulations for taxpayers who commit violations on invoices. — VNS