Vietnam is making appropriate strides in tax administrative procedure reform, said Joanna Nasr, a World Bank expert, at a workshop in Hanoi on January 15.

Deputy Head of the Reform Department under the General Department of Taxation, Hoang Thi Lan Anh, stated that tax procedures have been regularly renewed in recent years, with simplified policies and paperwork and additional software and tools supporting tax declaration available.

She shared that the General Department had proposed amending several legal documents of the Government, National Assembly and Finance Ministry in order to reduce the time lost for tax procedures. It will also speed up the implementation of e-tax services on enterprises nationwide.

To decrease the duration of tax payments, the WB official suggested simplifying regulations imposed on declaring and submitting value added taxes (VAT), obligatory insurance, and corporate income tax, as well as designing new tax software compatible with existing business accounting software.

Reports released at the workshop reveal Vietnam is now one of the nations with the greatest time spent on tax procedures, with 872 hours annually for each enterprise. This figure is four times higher than that of many Southeast Asian countries, with Indonesia at 259 hours, Thailand at 264 hours, Malaysia at 133 hours, and Singapore at 82 hours.

Vietnam ranks 149 th out of 189 nations in terms of time required to complete tax payments.-VNA