Asia Times: Vietnam tax law seen as an asset


	November 21, 2001	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

Vietnam tax law seen as an asset

HANOI - Vietnam's Ministry of Finance says that its newly drafted Law on Asset Tax will assist the country's integration into the world economy. Deputy Finance Minister Tran Van Ta said the asset tax would help evaluate, control and manage large assets and asset transfers.

It will also help plug the revenue gap that will open up as import-export taxes are gradually phased out during economic integration, Ta said. An asset tax helps define and reaffirm the right of a nation to collect tax, making it a safeguard of the tax system in a unifying world, he said.

The asset tax will apply to personal property with large values and to some state-controlled property, and will replace registration fees. Current property-related tax categories will not be fundamentally altered, although they will be tweaked.

State Treasury Director General Dang Van Thanh said that Vietnam did not previously have a law covering assets, but that other regulations had created a de facto framework. These were the agricultural land use tax, the land housing tax, the land-use rights transfer tax, corporate income tax, registration fees, and income tax on high-income earners.

Over the years, tax categories and fees on assets have made a major contribution to the state budget, despite problems with revenue collection. One problem has been that land used for agriculture, forestry and by fisheries faced conflicting regulations, some in the decree on land-use tax and others in the decree on land and housing. On the other hand, registration fees are a limited source of revenue and do not help the state manage the nation's assets, officials said.

(Asia Pulse/VNA)