The Power of Livestream: Optimizing Sales and Tax Compliance

According to Ms. Cuc, households and individuals engaged in e-commerce activities must comply with tax obligations, including self-declaration, calculation, payment, and taking responsibility for their declared figures. She emphasized that if they encounter difficulties in tax payment, these households and individuals can seek support from professional accounting or tax agent units.

“Individuals selling products through livestreams should also pay attention to selecting quality products from reputable brands to ensure the benefits of consumers,” Ms. Cuc added.

The Chairman of the Tax Consulting Association further emphasized that in recent years, the Ministry of Finance and the General Department of Taxation have been directing provincial tax departments to strengthen tax management, inspection, and examination based on risk management approaches, including e-commerce business activities. The amount of back taxes and fines collected from organizations and individuals conducting e-commerce activities has reached hundreds of billions of VND.

At the seminar, Mr. Nguyen Lam Thanh, representing TikTok Vietnam, also shared that with the current popularity of the affiliate marketing business model, tax-related issues are of particular concern to sellers and content creators.

“This includes tax obligations of sellers and creators when they generate revenue and income from TikTok Shop, as well as their obligations regarding personal income tax from affiliate marketing activities,” Mr. Thanh explained.

Assessing the reality of selling goods through e-commerce, Ms. Bui Thi Trang, Director of the Accounting Service Platform Division of MISA Joint Stock Company, pointed out that the current e-commerce business landscape makes it challenging to manage goods and revenues because sales occur on multiple platforms and foundations.

Given this reality, fulfilling tax obligations requires a significant amount of personnel to issue invoices, and the process of issuing invoices is manual due to the differences in information across platforms and management software. The large number of invoices to be issued daily increases the risk of errors in the timing of invoice issuance, as the timing of sales is not fixed.

Regarding households and enterprises, Ms. Bui Thi Trang mentioned that scattered information across multiple management solutions can lead to data inaccuracies when provided to accountants. Additionally, manual preparation of tax declarations and comparisons of tax reports can result in tax risks. A lack of updated tax information can lead to errors and further tax risks. According to Ms. Trang, MISA has developed a solution to address these issues.

Recently, the General Department of Taxation sent an open letter to taxpayers regarding the fulfillment of tax obligations for e-commerce and digital platform business activities. To ensure the solemnity, equality, and transparency in complying with tax laws and to foster a fair competitive environment in e-commerce activities among different business types, the General Department of Taxation requests and recommends that enterprises, organizations, and individuals generating revenue from e-commerce activities proactively learn about tax regulations and comply with tax registration, declaration, and payment obligations as prescribed by law.

Enterprises, organizations, and individuals who have been conducting e-commerce business but have not yet registered for tax should promptly proceed with tax registration, declaration, and payment with the tax authorities. The tax industry will develop plans for inspection and strictly handle violations regarding the non-performance or incomplete performance of tax obligations as stipulated by law.