According to the legal regulations, illegal benefits obtained from committing administrative violations in the field of commercial activities, production and trading of counterfeit and banned goods and protection of consumers’ interests must be seized to submit to the state budget. The identification and settlement of these illegal benefits were specified previously in Circular 149/2014/TT-BTC (“Circular 149”) and recently in Circular 65/2022/TT-BTC (“Circular 65”).
Circular 65 has some notable new provisions compared to Circular 149 in determining the amount of illegal profits to be confiscated and remitted to the state budget as follows:
Amendment of the determination scope of illegal benefits
Previously, Circular 149 stipulated that illegal benefits are “benefits that organizations and individuals gain from violations”. However, Circular 65 has expanded towards: “illegal benefits are objects, money, valuable papers or other assets obtained from administrative violations”.
Change on the basis for determining the benefits as valuable papers
Circular 65 omitted the determination of benefits based on the denomination valuable papers as prescribed in Circular 149. Accordingly, the determination shall rely on (i) actual value obtained at the time of transfer or (ii) book value in case the papers have been dispersed or destroyed.
Proposal of the principle of reimbursement for acts of illegally consuming, dispersing or destroying exhibits and means of administrative violations
In these cases, the violating organizations or individuals must reimburse an amount of money equivalent to the value of the exhibits and/or the means of administrative violations that have been illegally consumed, dispersed or destroyed.
This Circular shall take effect from January 1, 2023.
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