Penalties for Administrative Violations in the Field of Customs

The sanctions for violations regarding tax declaration deadlines, customs declarations, tax declarations, tax evasion, and tax fraud are stipulated as follows:

- Violations of the regulations on the time limit for completing customs procedures and submitting tax documents, depending on the violation, will be fined from VND 500,000 to VND 50,000,000. Additionally, remedial measures such as forced re-export of temporarily imported goods and means of transport, and forced removal of goods from Vietnam may be applied.- Violations of customs declaration regulations, depending on the degree and nature of the violations, are subject to penalties ranging from VND 500,000 to VND 40,000,000. Violations of customs declarations that lead to a shortage of payable taxes or an increase in the exempted, reduced, refunded, or non-collected taxes, or fraudulent and evaded taxes, will be penalized according to the sanctions for violations of tax declaration or tax evasion, and tax fraud.- For violations of tax declaration regulations where a taxpayer makes incorrect declarations leading to a shortage of payable taxes or an increase in the exempted, reduced, refunded, or non-collected taxes, besides paying the full amount of tax and late payment interest, the taxpayer can be fined from 10% to 20% of the under-declared tax amount or the unlawfully exempted, reduced, non-collected, or refunded amount. Violations of tax declaration regulations for the purpose of tax evasion or tax fraud are not subject to this penalty but to the sanctions for acts of tax evasion and tax fraud.- The sanctions for taxpayers who commit tax evasion or tax fraud, but not to the extent of criminal liability, will include paying the full amount of evaded or fraudulent taxes and being fined an equivalent amount to the evaded or fraudulent taxes. If there are aggravating circumstances, for organizations each aggravating factor increases the penalty by 0.2 times but not exceeding 3 times the evaded or fraudulent tax amount, and for individuals, each aggravating factor increases the penalty by 0.1 times but not exceeding 1.5 times the evaded or fraudulent tax amount.

More details can be found in Decree 45/2016/ND-CP effective from August 1, 2016, which repeals Article 23 of Decree 127/2013/ND-CP.

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