The Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications on Tuesday accused foreign streaming companies such as Netflix Inc and Apple Inc of skirting their tax responsibilities, saying it creates unfair competition for domestic firms.
Foreign streaming firms, which have combined revenues of nearly 1 trillion dong (US$43.15 million) from 1 million subscribers, have never paid tax in Vietnam, the ministry said.
“Domestic companies have to abide by tax and content regulations while foreign firms do not, which is unfair competition,” Vietnamese Minister of Information and Communications Nguyen Manh Hung told a government meeting.
“Some content on Netflix has flouted regulations related to the history and sovereignty of the country, violence, drug use and sex,” he added.
Vietnam introduced a cybersecurity law two years ago that requires all foreign businesses earning income from online activities in Vietnam to store their data in the country.
Netflix said it had no plans to place its servers locally or open an office in Vietnam at the moment.
The company said in a statement that it would continue to engage with the government on potential regulations on video on-demand services accessible in Vietnam.
“We are supportive of the implementation of a mechanism that will make it possible for foreign service providers like Netflix to collect and remit taxes in Vietnam,” a Netflix spokesperson said in the statement.
“However today such a mechanism does not exist,” it said.
Netflix was told to remove Full Metal Jacket, a Vietnam War film from its service in the country.
Hung said that the information ministry, finance ministry and tax department were working to facilitate tax collection by calculating foreign streaming companies’ revenues in Vietnam since their entry into the market.
Tech giants are increasingly facing tougher fiscal regimes in Southeast Asia, where regulators held talks last year on a regional push to tax them more.
The Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia have recently passed or drafted legislation aiming to ensure taxes are paid.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts