MoF‘s gold export tax sounds impractical

The Ministry of Finance’s tax imposition on gold export is likely impractical due to low technological expertise on gold valuation, the local newswire Doanh nhan reported January 17.

From January 1, 2011, the MoF issued Circular 184 to impose a 10% tax rate on material gold of under 99.99% purity and gold jewelries of above 99%,; and 0% for others, the local media reported.

However, the Vietnam Gold Traders’ Association said equipments and technological expertise on assessing gold purity in Vietnam and the world can determine an absolute error of 1 / 1,000 only (or 99.9%) ; not 1/10,000 (99.99%).

The most popular techniques to ascertain the purity of gold are touchstone, density, electronic pen, X-ray fluorescence, fire assay and ICP (inductively coupled plasma), in which the first three methods have poor accuracy but cost up to billions dong to buy equipments, making not many local enterprises affordable, said specialists.

Meanwhile, Vietnam has to date had only some big organizations such as Asian Commercial Bank that can analyze gold purity most precisely with an assay laboratory, which might make it hard to apply Circular 184. – Stoxplus.com

Tags: vietnam gold, Vietnam gold exports, Vietnam gold market

Posted by VBN on Jan 17 2011. Filed under Gold. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry