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.
With the speed cryptocurrency is emerging as the millennial generation’s alternative asset of choice in India, it is hard to imagine that just two years ago a couple of blockchain pioneers were briefly in police custody. Sathvik Vishwanath and Harish BV, cofounders of a then five-year-old start-up, were arrested in late 2018. No, they had not pulled off a shady initial coin offering. Their “crime” was that they put up a kiosk in a mall in Bangalore where customers could swap bitcoin, ether or ripple for cash or vice versa. That was the whole point of unocoin, their crypto token exchange.
FIVE NEW FABS: An acquisition of Siltronic would boost GlobalWafers’ market share from 17 to 30 percent, easily surpassing Japanese rival Sumco’s 25 percent GlobalWafers Inc (環球晶圓) yesterday said it is in final talks to acquire Germany-based Siltronic AG in a 3.75 billion euro (US$4.5 billion) deal, which might help it compete with its closest rival Sumco Corp of Japan. The acquisition would be the fifth for GlobalWafers since 2008, as it has grown to become the world’s No. 3 supplier of silicon wafers through such deals. GlobalWafers, which has a 17 percent market share, would see its market position greatly elevated to 30 percent when combined with Siltronic’s 13 percent, according to a presentation Siltronic gave to its investors at a quarterly conference in August. Sumco
A Chinese factory owned by South Korean semiconductor giant SK Hynix Inc yesterday halted operations after a plant worker was found to have an asymptomatic infection of COVID-19, Xinhua news agency reported. The South Korean worker based at the plant in Chongqing since February had departed on Thursday for South Korea, Xinhua reported. He was tested at Incheon Airport in Seoul and confirmed positive for COVID-19 on Saturday, it reported. All factory staff as well as staff and recent guests at the hotel where the worker lived have been isolated and given nucleic acid tests, the agency said. “We’re cooperating with the local government
CONCERNS: The bank would act if it noticed currency speculation, the governor said, but he did not comment on a likely trajectory of the NT dollar against the greenback The central bank would intervene in the market whenever necessary to help stabilize the New Taiwan dollar, central bank Governor Yang Chin-long (楊金龍) said yesterday, adding that it is concerned Taiwan might be placed on the US watchlist for currency manipulation. The Control Yuan recently sent letter inquiring about the central bank’s market regulation efforts, Yang told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee on the NT dollar’s appreciation and property price hikes. “It is the central bank’s top responsibility to stabilize foreign exchanges,” he said. The central bank has often stepped in toward the end of trading sessions to moderate the NT
RSS