The electronic tax filing services are expected to flourish in the time to come, which explains why the “big guys” in the hi-tech sector have jumped into the promising field.

In 2009, the General Department of Taxation (GDT) began implementing the mechanism allowing declaring and paying tax via the Internet in a trial basis in four provinces and cities. The number of localities has risen to 19.

It is expected that by 2015, 60 percent of enterprises nationwide will use e-tax services.

The cake is getting bigger

To date, five hi-tech companies, including Viettel, TS24, MacroNT, SEATECH and Bkav Telecom have tested the technical connection of the e-tax declaration receiving with taxation bodies’ electronic portals since late 2010. Of the five, Bkav Telecom and SEATECH have been granted the licenses to provide this kind of service. Most of the enterprises can provide the digital signature service in order to create most favorable conditions for clients in e-tax payment.

GDT said it is considering the applications for providing e-tax filing services of Viettel and TS24

Experts believe that the e-tax filing services will prosper rapidly in the time to come, while the number of service providers will keep rising.

When asked why Viettel wants to jump into the new market, Nguyen Anh Tuan, a senior executive of Viettel Telecom, said Viettel has been consistently following the strategy on developing software technologies, e-commerce together with telecom services. Besides, it also tries to diversify the services to be provided to business and individual clients.

“The decisions to make investment in digital signature service, security solution, or e-tax filing are the moves to implement the above said strategy of Viettel,” Tuan said.

He went on to say that Viettel can take full advantage of its large distribution network existing in 63 provinces and cities nationwide with 700 shops in districts, 20,000 workers in communes and 110 supermarkets

Ngo Tuan Anh, Director of Bkav Telecom, believes that the e-tax filing services will develop strongly, when the expenses enterprises have to pay for the services are not high.

Nearly all enterprises now have Internet access with low subscription fees. Meanwhile, the expenses on digital signature are not too high: equipments cost about 500,000 dong, while the annual subscription fee is just one million dong.

“It is obviously much cheaper to use e-tax filing services than the traditional filing method, under which enterprises have to send officers to taxation bodies to make tax declarations,” he said.

Under the traditional filing method, enterprises have to pay for printing tax declarations and submitting to taxation bodies, printing reports for submission and storing, and pay for traveling between enterprises’ head offices and taxation bodies. Especially, they have to pay for the time spent on tax declaration and payment.

Commenting about the market’s potentials, Chu Tien Dung, Chair of the HCM City Informatics Association, said this is really a vast market. He stressed that it is a growing tendency when information technology companies more and more get involved in providing services, while they not only simply sell software or hardware.

Customers remain shy of new services

Though e-tax filing is considered a kind of service which helps save money, time and the workforce, many enterprises still keep hesitant to use the service for the security information reason.

The owner of a small enterprise, which trades wooden furniture products, said that he dares not entrust any third party to make tax declaration, let alone making tax declarations via Internet. He said business information may be leaking, which will cause disadvantages to enterprises.

Tuan from Viettel Telecom admits that this is really a big barrier. However, service providers have been trying to persuade their clients that they always have to obey the laws which clearly stipulate the legal ties between clients and service providers. Especially, service providers – telcos – have many experiences in information security.

Also, the problems in the information infrastructure are also the reason that makes businesses hesitate to use new services. 34 percent of enterprises complain that the e-tax filing system sometimes report errors which makes them unable to submit tax declarations.

TBVTSG