Casino in northeast Vietnam fined $15,000 for tax evasion

The Quang Ninh Tax Department says it has found the casino violating corporate tax and value-added tax regulations after inspecting returns filed in 2017 and its value-added-tax receipts until February 2018.

The department has levied total fines of US$15,000, including US$10,500 for faulty reporting of value added tax and US$3,700 for using illegal invoices.

The Casino Gaming Club is the only gambling facility approved to serve foreigners exclusively in Ha Long Bay City, but it has been in the red since 2013.

Last October, the company’s financial report stated that its losses in the third quarter had jumped 23 times from a year ago to more than US$3.04 million.

Managers said most of its customers were from Taiwan and mainland China, but their numbers have dwindled in recent times.

In the first three months of this year, the company earned nearly US$2.92 million in revenue, and around US$69,000 in after tax profits. This is a sharp increase compared to a US$908,000 loss during the same period last year.

However, the company's accumulated loss is estimated at more than US$7.4 million on a total capital investment of US$30.5 million.

Vietnam has six casinos that are open exclusively for foreigners, and four of them are reporting losses.

Earlier this year the government lifted a long standing gambling ban on Vietnamese nationals, allowing them to patronize two casinos, one on the southern resort island of Phu Quoc and the other at the Van Don Special Economic Zone in the northern province of Quang Ninh.