The request of the state-run oil and gas group PetroVietnam (PVN) to have the incentives it provided to employees exempted from the personal income tax is unprecedented, a top official from the Ho Chi Minh City Tax Agency said Tuesday. PVN has recently called on the Ministry of Finance to exempt certain monetary incentives its employees are granted when working overseas from the personal income tax. PVN officials working on oil and gas projects in other countries are granted an allowance, and have the company pay their housing rent, school tuition for their children, and even the charges for overweight luggage at airports. “But such a demand is groundless,” said the tax official, who wished not to be named. Under current tax regulations, only foreigners working in Vietnam are allowed to have their allowance exempted from the personal income tax, while there is no similar rule applicable for Vietnamese working overseas, he explained. “It’s logical that the city’s tax agency demanded to collect taxes from these incentives,” he added. The oil and gas giant also made another interesting proposal: to be allowed to pay the tax on the behalf of the recipients, and the payment would be counted as a reasonable expense. Reasonable expenses are excluded in the corporate income taxation for the company, which the tax official said would only prove that the demand is “illogical and unreasonable.” “The proposal can be realized only when PVN states in the contracts it signs with the employees that the company will cover all of the taxes and other expenses when granting wages and salaries,” he said. “Otherwise, the personal income tax must be deducted from the income of the employees, not the money of the company, especially when PVN is a state-owned enterprise.”