Vietnam Tax Alert - Customs Audit - Post-clearance audit management and latest trends

Vietnam - Post-clearance audit management and latest trends. 

Post-clearance audit (PCA) is one of the key responsibilities of the Vietnam Customs Authorities (Vietnam Customs). It not only helps to ensure a company’s compliance with the customs regulations and other prevailing administrative policies, but 
also contributes to Vietnam Customs’ efforts with regard to budget collection. Based on a recent unofficial statistics paper1 from the Academy of Finance and Hanoi State Treasury, the contribution rate of export duties and import duties to the total 
state budget is almost 15%.

In 2014, Vietnam introduced e-customs nationwide. This has meant that generally customs clearance is processed very quickly (within a few days), unless 
fraud is suspected, thanks to minimal paperwork and physical checks. This has made PCA more important as Vietnam Customs do not have the time to fully consider the potentially complex customs issues within such a short clearance timeframe.

The below table illustrates the number of PCAs, total duties collected, and duties collected per PCA for the period from 2011 to 2019. 

Based on this table, we can draw some observations as follows: 

• There was a significant increase in the number of PCAs since 2014 compared with earlier media reports that Vietnam Customs applied strict customs treatment in this year.

• 2016 had the highest amount of duties collected from PCAs. This is consistent with media reports that Vietnam Customs applied strict customs treatment in this year. For example,  if the importer of record simply failed to check the correct box showing a relationship between themselves and the exporter, the transaction value/ declared value was rejected, and a new higher value was calculated and imposed by Vietnam Customs. Some of these cases are still under dispute either at Vietnam Customs or at court reports that Vietnam Customs applied strict customs treatment in this year.

• The number of PCAs in 2018 and 2019 was less than that for earlier years however, total duties collected remained stable, and the duties collected per PCA was higher.