Uber faces Vietnam tax ultimatum
AUTHORITIES in Vietnam’s biggest city are cracking down on Uber’s alleged shady tax payments in the country and say they are determined to see results before the end of the year.
According to Tran Ngoc Tam, director of the Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department, the company must pay an additional corporate income tax amount of 66.68 billion dong (Bt94.5 million).
He confirmed with infonet.vn, the Ministry of Information and Communications’ online news site, that out of that amount, just 13.3 billion dong has been submitted by Uber’s Vietnam-based office so far.
Tam was certain that his department would resort to coercive enforcement measures to collect the rest of Uber’s unpaid taxes, starting with alerting commercial banks to suspend the company’s accounts.
Initially, Uber’s 2017 corporate tax declaration was just over 76.8 billion dong, which did not sit well with the country’s taxation authorities. Citing the company’s alleged total revenue since 2014 to 2017 of 2.7 trillion dong, the city’s Tax Department demanded they pay another $2.9 million, which the company showed reluctance to do.
Nguyen Nam Binh, deputy director of the Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department, said that the company had sent an official confirmation to pay by December 20, but immediately announced they would continue to protest and litigate the matter if necessary.
The cited US$594,000 accounts for only Uber’s foreign contractor tax.
