The Ministry of Finance’s General Department of Taxation (GDT) has approved the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT)’s e-invoice solution system to provide services at an official portal. According to a circular issued by the Finance Ministry, starting from this month, all enterprises, business households, and individuals, except for special cases, must use e-invoices instead of paper invoices.
The Director of the Centre for Informatics and Digital Technology, under the MoIT’s Department of E-Commerce and Digital Economy, noted that the system will create an equal, transparent, and favourable business environment. The promotion of e-invoices is a key task of the tax sector in its attempt to digitally transform businesses, financial agencies, and state departments. The work will contribute to automating public and private services and management and organisation methods to reform administrative procedures, reduce costs, increase business productivity, and support e-commerce growth.
With the Vietnam Electronic Contract Development Axis that the Ministry announced in June, the e-invoice system will help businesses in the industry and trade sector digitise other aspects of their operations, following government policy. So far, over 90 units, including the Department of E-Commerce and Digital Economy, have got the GDT’s greenlight to provide e-invoice solutions.
Tax reform remains a key objective for the government. In April, the Minister of Finance launched a nationwide electronic invoice programme. During the inauguration, he said that e-invoices are crucial in creating a transparent and fair business environment, more streamlined administrative processes, and higher productivity. They are an integral part of Vietnam’s national strategy for digitalisation. The Ministry’s e-invoice project significantly improves the level of transparency and effectiveness while helping cut costs and improve the business environment.
With the introduction of an info portal for taxpayers outside of Vietnam and the Etax-mobile app, the country’s tax authority has improved its ability to oversee and manage online commercial activities and tax procedures. Taxpayers now have been granted access to easier ways to proceed with their tax applications using mobile platforms. The Ministry learnt, after a short but successful pilot e-invoice programme, that the apps play an important role in convincing businesses to switch to digital modes. As of June, over 92%, or 764,314, Vietnamese firms had registered to convert to using electronic invoices, according to data from GDT’s Deputy. More than 52,770 business households and individuals nationwide had opted for e-invoices, OpenGov Asia reported.
Promoting the use of e-invoices is part of the government’s plan to build a digital society and economy, and maintaining cybersecurity is crucial to supporting this technology-based infrastructure. Earlier, the Deputy Minister, Ministry of Information and Communications, Nguyen Huy Dung said that with 900 cyberattacks and 5 malicious codes generated every second, and 40 vulnerabilities detected every day, the country is facing severe cyber threats that could grow sharply. The government’s top priority is to strengthen cybersecurity for state agencies, organisations, and individuals towards a more resilient future together.
According to the Government Information Security Commission, in 2021, more than 45,000 out of 76,977 cyber-attacks on some key network systems were carried out in the form of exploiting vulnerabilities. There were about 14,000 network scanning attacks, more than 12,000 targeted attacks, more than 7,300 authentication attacks, nearly 7,000 malware attacks, and about 650 denial-of-service attacks.
