Accompanying with start-up enterprises

Ms. Au Thi Nguyet Lien, Head of the Propagating and Supporting Taxpayers Department (Provincial Tax Department) said that according to the Decree No. 39/2018 of the Government, business households shifted to small and medium enterprises would be supported with consultancy, dossiers and procedures guideline for establishing enterprises; business registration and information disclosure; appraisal and granting of business licenses for the first time; license fees, tax administration  and accounting regimes consultancy and guideline.

The Provincial Tax Department provides maximum support for tax policies for start-up businesses.

In particular, business households shifting to small and medium enterprises will be supported with consultancy, dossier and procedures for establishing businesses for free. This includes procedures such as order, procedures, and dossier for enterprises establishment registration; order, procedures and dossier for registration of certification of eligibility for conditional businesses (if any).

According to Ms. Lien, before “starting up”, enterprises need to have an initial preparation of professional knowledge, especially knowledge of tax policies to ensure good implementation of tax obligations and effective application of preferential policies for successful start-up.

However, in reality, in the process of starting up, enterprises often face many difficulties such as competition on investment capital, hard to find qualified human resources and time pressure. In particular, the biggest problem is they lack a skilled accountant team and have no time to study tax policies explicitly; thereby leading to errors in the start-up process and applying tax policies into practice.

In this era of industrial revolution 4.0, when access to information becomes easy, updating tax laws is becoming more and more convenient. However, in order to understand the tax law policies, businesses need time to learn and research them carefully, select information sources and apply them effectively, especially on preferential tax policies for newly established enterprises and start-ups.

Launching the support website

In order to support start-up enterprises, the Provincial Tax Department has been implementing many solutions such as organizing direct consultancy points, coordinating with relevant departments, boards and sectors, Business Association, Young Entrepreneurs Association, Provincial Union and Vietnam Youth Union Association of the province to open training courses on tax law policies for individuals, groups and  innovative and creative start-up enterprises in the province.

Mr. Le Truong Luu (first from the left), Member of the Party Central Committee, Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, Chairman of the Provincial People's Council, surveying activities of enterprises.

The Provincial Tax Department arranges staff to regularly support enterprises via telephone and email. For other contents that are not within the scope of the support program for start-up enterprises, the receiving staff will transfer the requests to responsible agencies and departments for timely settlement and guidance.

Mr. Ha Van Khoa, Director of the Provincial Tax Department informed that in the long term, the Provincial Tax Department will organize a network to link the tax agency with start-up enterprises as well as among the start-up enterprises, thereby shortening the distance to create effective support. A newly built support website for start-up enterprises, expected to launch in February 2019, can be found on the homepage of the Provincial Tax Department with links to the websites of the Provincial People's Committee, the Department of Planning and Investment, the Department of Justice and the Department of Science and Technology to help transfer information to enterprises on a timely manner. At the same time, the Provincial Tax Department continues to effectively implement the Plan No. 53 on March 16th, 2018 of the Provincial People's Committee on supporting the innovative and creative start-up ecosystem in 2018 in the province.

According to the proposal of the Provincial Tax Department, in order to widely implement the support to start-up enterprises, relevant departments, boards and sectors  need to develop effective plans to them; focus on building infrastructure to serve and support start-up activities; update information on the website of the units regularly and on time to help the start-up enterprises to have all the necessary information, provide information to the relevant units to coordinate in implementing the support.

In addition, there must be cohesion and coordination among departments to organize support programs in the province such as organizing communication programs on start-up, supporting start-up, supporting investment in start-up, diffusing and propagating successful startup stories in and out of the province to the youth, students, pupils, scientists and enterprises community. These communication programs also include organizing the 2018 national innovative and creative start-up festival, seminars and talk shows on supporting the innovative and creative start-up ecosystem, and programs connecting between growing businesses and young entrepreneurs.

Story and photos: Ha Nguyen