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Vietnam VAT guidelines

FACTSHEET
Country codeVN
Tax nameValue Added Tax (VAT) — Thuế giá trị gia tăng (GTGT)
Tax AuthorityTax Department (Cục Thuế), Ministry of Finance — renamed from the General Department of Taxation in March 2025
Standard rate10% (temporarily 8% for most goods/services, 1 Jul 2025 – 31 Dec 2026)

Overview​

Vietnam levies Value Added Tax (VAT) — known locally as thuế giá trị gia tăng, abbreviated GTGT — under VAT Law No. 48/2024/QH15, passed by the National Assembly on 26 November 2024 and in force from 1 July 2025, which repealed the previous VAT Law No. 13/2008/QH12 (as amended). [1] VAT is charged on the value added to goods and services as they move from production, through circulation, to consumption, and applies to goods and services used for production, business and consumption in Vietnam — a consumption-based scope that is Vietnam's working equivalent of a "place of supply" rule, and the basis on which exports qualify for the 0% rate below. [1]

VAT is administered by the Tax Department (Cục Thuế) under the Ministry of Finance. The Ministry renamed the former General Department of Taxation (Tổng cục Thuế) to Cục Thuế with effect from 1 March 2025, restructuring it into a three-tier system of the central Tax Department, 20 regional tax sub-departments and around 350 inter-district tax teams. [2] Currency throughout this guide is the Vietnamese Dong (VND), and the tax year runs on the calendar year, with the VAT period itself set monthly or quarterly (see Filing and payment). [3]

Layering. Not applicable — Vietnamese VAT is a single national tax administered centrally by the Ministry of Finance. There is no provincial, state or municipal VAT layer; provinces and cities collect other local revenues, but not a VAT surcharge. (Checked 2026-08-10, against VAT Law No. 48/2024/QH15 and Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP, neither of which provides for sub-national VAT.)

Two other laws reshape Vietnam's indirect-tax administration around this VAT Law. Tax Administration Law No. 108/2025/QH15, passed 10 December 2025, takes effect from 1 July 2026 (its Article 13, and e-invoicing for household/individual businesses under Article 26, took effect earlier, from 1 January 2026) and rebuilds tax registration, e-invoicing, and cross-border/e-commerce tax administration around risk-based, data-driven management. [4] And Decree No. 254/2026/ND-CP, detailing that Law's e-invoice and e-document provisions, took effect 1 July 2026 — see Recent changes. [5]

To check a Vietnamese tax code, use our Vietnam MST validator. For the MST format itself — the 10-digit and 13-digit structures, province prefix and checksum digit — see our Vietnam MST number guide.

Registration​

Who should register. VAT registration in Vietnam is not a separate opt-in step for most businesses — it follows business registration. Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP, Article 3(1), confirms that organisations established and registered under the Enterprise Law, the Cooperative Law and other specialist laws, economic units of political/social organisations, foreign-invested enterprises, export-processing enterprises, and business households and individuals are all VAT taxpayers by virtue of Article 4(1) of VAT Law No. 48/2024/QH15. [1] In practice, the two thresholds that matter are not "must I register" but "am I exempt at all" and "which computation method do I use" — see below.

  • Genuine exemption threshold (household/individual businesses only). Under VAT Law Article 5(25), goods and services sold by a household or individual business with annual revenue of VND 200 million or below are not subject to VAT at all. This threshold rose from VND 100 million and took effect 1 January 2026, later than the rest of the Law. [1] Companies, cooperatives and other organised entities have no equivalent revenue floor — they are inside the VAT net from their first taxable supply.
  • Deduction-method vs. direct-method threshold (VND 1 billion). Article 21 of Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP applies the input-output deduction method to businesses with annual revenue from goods/services of VND 1 billion or more, tested on a trailing 12-month VAT-return basis and locked in for two years once determined; businesses below that line use the direct method (a flat percentage of revenue — see Rates) unless they voluntarily opt into the deduction method and keep full accounting/invoice records. [2] This is a computation-method threshold, not a registration threshold — direct-method businesses are still VAT taxpayers and still file.
  • Non-resident threshold — zero. A foreign supplier without a permanent establishment in Vietnam conducting e-commerce or digital-platform business with Vietnamese customers is itself a taxpayer under VAT Law Article 4(4), with no revenue floor stated in the Law before that obligation attaches — unlike the VND 200 million and VND 1 billion thresholds that apply to domestic businesses. [1] See Cross-border rules for how this interacts with marketplace withholding.
  • Tax registration number (MST). Vietnam's tax code — Mã số thuế (MST) — is 10 digits for a parent organisation or individual, or 13 digits for a subsidiary (the first 10 matching the parent, plus a 3-digit suffix). Since 1 July 2025, an individual's or household business's MST is their 12-digit national identity number (CCCD) rather than a separately issued code. A brief overview only — see our dedicated Vietnam MST number guide for the full format, checksum and worked examples.
  • How to register. A company obtains its MST automatically on business registration through the National Business Registration Portal; a household/individual business or an organisation without a separate legal-entity registration registers tax directly with the Tax Department. Under Tax Administration Law No. 108/2025/QH15, tax registration covers first-time registration, changes to registered information, notice of temporary business suspension, tax-code termination and tax-code restoration as parts of one continuous scope. [4]
  • Voluntary registration. Available. Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP, Article 21(2), lets an operating enterprise, cooperative or union below the VND 1 billion threshold register voluntarily for the deduction method provided it keeps full accounting, invoice and bookkeeping records — along with newly formed companies executing an approved investment project, and other specific cases the Article lists. [2] A business might do this to recover input VAT on start-up costs before it has meaningful revenue.
  • Deregistration. Tax Administration Law No. 108/2025/QH15 places "chấm dứt hiệu lực mã số thuế" (termination of tax-code validity) and "khôi phục mã số thuế" (tax-code restoration) within the same registration chapter as first-time registration, and separately sets out when a taxpayer's obligation to complete outstanding tax duties is triggered — dissolution, bankruptcy, cessation of operation, not operating at the registered address, reorganisation, the taxpayer's death or incapacity, a change of managing tax office, or before departing Vietnam. [4] This guide could not obtain the implementing decree's step-by-step deregistration procedure or filing deadlines from an official source within its research window, so treat the outline above as the scope, not the full mechanics.
  • Group registration. Not available. Neither VAT Law No. 48/2024/QH15 nor Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP contains a VAT-group or fiscal-unity provision — each legal entity is its own taxpayer. The closest mechanism is narrower: under Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP Article 21(4), a newly established branch of a company already on the deduction method automatically takes its parent's computation method if it is required to file VAT separately — a filing-method inheritance rule for a single legal entity's branch, not a combined multi-entity group return. (Checked 2026-08-10.)

Rates​

RateLegal basisApplies to
10% (standard)VAT Law Art. 9(3)Goods and services not listed at 0% or 5%, including — expressly — digital services supplied by a foreign supplier without a permanent establishment in Vietnam to organisations/individuals in Vietnam via e-commerce channels or digital platforms. [1]
8% (temporary cut)Resolution 204/2025/QH15A 2-point cut from the 10% rate, 1 July 2025 – 31 December 2026, for everything that would otherwise sit at 10% under Art. 9(3) — except telecommunications; financial, banking, securities and insurance activities; real-estate business; metal products; mined/extracted products (except coal); and goods/services subject to special consumption tax (except petrol), which stay at 10%. [2]
5% (reduced)VAT Law Art. 9(2)Clean water for production/daily life (excluding bottled/canned water); fertilisers, ore for fertiliser production, pesticides; irrigation/agricultural-support services; unprocessed crop, forestry, livestock and aquaculture products beyond the 0%-non-taxable list; medical equipment, preventive/curative medicines and pharmaceutical materials; teaching aids; traditional/folk performing arts; children's toys; books (other than those already non-taxable); science-and-technology services; and sale, lease and hire-purchase of social housing. [1]
0%VAT Law Art. 9(1)Exported goods and services consumed outside Vietnam (or sold to and consumed within a free-trade zone for export production), international transport, aviation/maritime services for international transport, and duty-free/quarantine-area sales to departing travellers — subject to the export-documentation conditions in Cross-border rules. Certain categories are expressly carved out of 0% even though exported: technology/IP transfer abroad, reinsurance abroad, credit-granting services, capital transfer, derivatives, postal/telecom services, unprocessed exported minerals, tobacco/alcohol/beer imported then re-exported, and fuel or cars sold to a free-trade-zone business. [1]
1% / 2% / 3% / 5% (direct method, on revenue)VAT Law Art. 12(2)Businesses below the VND 1 billion deduction-method threshold (see Registration) pay a flat percentage of revenue instead of computing output-minus-input VAT: 1% for distribution/supply of goods; 5% for services and construction not including materials; 3% for production, transport and services tied to goods, and construction including materials; 2% for other business activities. [1]

A rate cut layered on top of a statutory rate is genuinely two different numbers for the same item, both current. A restaurant's food sales, for example, sit at the Article 9(3) statutory 10% but are actually charged at 8% today because Resolution 204/2025/QH15's exclusion list does not mention food and beverage service; a bank's account-management fee, by contrast, is excluded from the cut and stays at the full 10%.

Announced future rates. None identified beyond the 31 December 2026 expiry of the temporary 8% cut in Resolution 204/2025/QH15 — no confirmed extension or step-back schedule has been located from an official source as of this guide's last update.

Cross-border rules​

Imports. The importer is the taxpayer (VAT Law Art. 4(2)). [1] The VAT base for imported goods is the customs import value, plus import duty, plus any supplementary import duty, plus special consumption tax (if any), plus environmental protection tax (if any) — VAT is layered on top of the other import taxes, not calculated independently of them (VAT Law Art. 7(1)(b)). [1]

Exports. Zero-rated under Article 9(1) (see Rates), but only if the exporter can support the claim. Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP, Article 27 (reflecting VAT Law Art. 14(2)), requires — beyond the general invoice and non-cash-payment conditions — a contract with the foreign party, a sales/service invoice, a non-cash payment document, and the customs declaration for exported goods, plus packing list, bill of lading and insurance documents where they exist. [2]

Reverse charge on imported services. A Vietnamese business or individual purchasing services (including services bundled with goods) from a foreign organisation with no permanent establishment in Vietnam, or from a non-resident foreign individual, is itself the taxpayer under VAT Law Article 4(3) — a standard self-assessed reverse charge — except where the narrower e-commerce/platform rules in Article 4(4)–(5) apply instead (below). [1]

Digital services and the e-commerce channel. VAT Law Article 9(3) expressly taxes, at 10% (temporarily 8% where the Resolution 204/2025/QH15 cut applies), "services provided by foreign suppliers without a permanent establishment in Vietnam to organisations and individuals in Vietnam via e-commerce channels and digital platforms." [1]

Foreign sellers — B2B and B2C, answered separately.

  • B2C (foreign supplier to a Vietnamese individual consumer). The foreign supplier ("nhà cung cấp nước ngoài") is itself the taxpayer under VAT Law Article 4(4), registering and filing directly in Vietnam — or, where the seller trades through an e-commerce trading floor or a payment-enabled digital platform, that platform operator withholds, declares and pays the tax on the seller's behalf under Article 4(5). [1]
  • B2B (foreign supplier to a Vietnamese business). The general rule is the Article 4(3) reverse charge described above — the Vietnamese buyer self-assesses as principal. But where the Vietnamese buyer applies the deduction method and the purchase runs through an e-commerce channel or digital platform, Article 4(4)'s last sentence instead makes the buyer withhold and pay the tax on the foreign supplier's behalf — a mechanically different obligation from self-assessment, even though the buyer is still the one remitting the money. [1]

Marketplace / platform deemed-supplier liability. Beyond the foreign-seller case above, VAT Law Article 4(5) puts the same withhold-declare-remit duty on domestic e-commerce trading-floor managers and payment-enabled digital-platform managers, for the household and individual businesses that sell on their platforms. [1] Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP points this specific case to its own dedicated implementing decree, Decree No. 117/2025/ND-CP (9 June 2025), on tax management for e-commerce and digital-platform business by households and individuals. [2]

Place of supply. Vietnam does not use "place of supply" as a defined legal term, but VAT Law Article 3 achieves the same effect: goods and services are subject to VAT where they are "used for production, business and consumption in Vietnam." [1] Exports are zero-rated precisely because they are consumed outside Vietnam (Art. 9(1)(a)–(b)); conversely, a service a foreign supplier delivers into Vietnam is taxable here regardless of where the supplier itself is established (Art. 9(3)). For goods, the operative marker is the import/export declaration; for services, it is where consumption occurs.

Foreign-traveller VAT refunds. Vietnam operates an outbound tax-free shopping scheme distinct from ordinary export zero-rating: VAT Law Article 15(5) entitles foreigners and overseas Vietnamese carrying a passport or international travel document to a refund on goods bought in Vietnam and carried out on departure. Circular No. 84/2026/TT-BTC (signed 30 June 2026, Công Báo No. 436 of 25 July 2026), effective 1 July 2026, replaces the previous Circulars No. 72/2014/TT-BTC and No. 92/2019/TT-BTC and establishes an electronic refund system for this route, except as set out in its Article 17. [3]

Invoice requirements​

Invoices sit under Decree No. 123/2020/ND-CP, substantially amended by Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP (effective 1 June 2025, which rewrote 40 of the Decree's 61 articles), and — from 1 July 2026 — alongside Decree No. 254/2026/ND-CP implementing the e-invoice provisions of Tax Administration Law No. 108/2025/QH15. [1]

Document types​

TypeWho issues it
VAT invoice (hóa đơn giá trị gia tăng)Businesses on the deduction method.
Sales invoice (hóa đơn bán hàng)Businesses on the direct method, including most household/individual businesses; also export-processing enterprises for their non-export-processing activities taxed on the direct method.
POS-generated e-invoice (hóa đơn điện tử khởi tạo từ máy tính tiền)Mandatory for household/individual businesses with annual revenue of VND 1 billion or more, and for enterprises selling directly to consumers in listed B2C sectors — shopping centres, supermarkets, retail (other than motor vehicles), food and beverage/restaurants, hotels, passenger transport, road-transport support services, entertainment/cinema and similar personal services — connected to transmit data to the tax authority. [1]
Commercial e-invoice (hóa đơn thương mại điện tử)New under Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP: for exporters who transmit commercial-invoice data electronically to the tax authority; an exporter unable to meet that data-transmission condition instead issues an ordinary electronic VAT or sales invoice. [1]

Mandatory content and issuance timing​

Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP added personal-identification and sector-specific detail to the mandatory-content rules: buyer information may now use the buyer's personal identification number (in place of a tax code, for individual buyers) or a state-budget-relation unit code; food-and-beverage invoices must show the specific items ordered; transport invoices must show the vehicle's plate number and route (origin–destination); and an e-commerce/platform transport-service invoice must show the goods carried and the sender's name, address and tax code or ID number. [1]

Issuance timing follows the VAT Law's general rule — for goods, the point of transfer of ownership/use or the point of invoicing, whichever occurs; for services, the point of completion or the point of invoicing (VAT Law Art. 8(1)) [2] — with sector-specific carve-outs Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP added on top:

  • Exports, including outward processing: no later than the next working day after customs clearance.
  • High-volume, recurring B2B services requiring reconciliation (rail-transport support, TV advertising, e-commerce services, banking (except lending), international remittance, securities, computerised lottery, road-toll collection between investor and toll operator, and others the Ministry of Finance specifies): the reconciliation date, and in any case no later than the 7th of the following month, or within 7 days of the end of an agreed billing cycle.
  • Insurance business: the date insurance revenue is recognised.
  • Casinos and prize electronic games: within 1 day of the end of the revenue-determination day (00:00–23:59), alongside a same-time data transmission of net takings (chips issued/collected, less prizes) on the Decree's prescribed form.
  • Lending: per the interest-collection period fixed in the credit contract (or on actual receipt if a scheduled instalment is not collected and is tracked off-balance-sheet).
[1]

Delegated invoicing (self-billing analogue)​

Vietnam's closest equivalent to self-billing is ủy nhiệm lập hóa đơn — delegated invoicing. Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP widened this: previously only enterprises, economic organisations and other organisations could delegate e-invoice creation to a third party (limited, under the prior Circular 78/2021/TT-BTC guidance, to a party affiliated with the seller); now household and individual businesses may also delegate a third party to issue e-invoices on their behalf. [1]

Retention and audit trail​

The general Accounting Law No. 88/2015/QH13, Article 41(5)(b), sets a minimum retention period of 10 years for accounting vouchers used directly for bookkeeping and financial statements — a category that includes invoices — running from the end of the fiscal year concerned; vouchers used only for internal management (not directly for the books) need only 5 years, and records of lasting economic, security or defence significance are retained permanently. [3] This guide could not confirm a VAT-specific audit-trail requirement — such as mandated tamper-evidence logging or a defined sequential-integrity check an auditor can demand — beyond the general obligation (VAT Law Art. 13) not to falsify, misuse, illegally access or destroy invoice/document information systems, so treat that narrower point as unconfirmed.

Currency and language​

This guide could not confirm, from an official source read directly, a general statutory rule on invoice language or a standard foreign-currency conversion mechanism for ordinary domestic invoices. All VAT Law figures and thresholds are denominated in Dong (VND). Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP does separately set the VAT base for international-telecom and foreign-organisation-supplied services (Articles 12–13), but that governs the taxable amount, not an invoicing-currency or language rule as such — treat this point as unconfirmed rather than assume either a mandatory-Vietnamese or foreign-currency-permitted rule.

Illustrative specimen​

No official annotated specimen invoice was located from a Vietnamese authority within this guide's research window. The sheet below is an illustration built by LookupTax, placing the mandatory particulars described above where they appear on an issued invoice. Do not treat any name, number or code below as real.

Specimen

Hóa đơn giá trị gia tăng — VAT invoice

Symbol (ký hiệu)
1C26TAA
Invoice number
0000123
Date of issue
10/08/2026
Seller (người bán)Công ty TNHH Ví Dụ ABCMST: 0100000000
Buyer (người mua)Công ty TNHH Khách Hàng XYZMST: 0200000000
Line itemQuantityAmount before VAT
Dịch vụ tư vấn (Consulting service)1 gói (package)100,000,000 VND
Amount before VAT
100,000,000 VND
VAT rate
8%
VAT amount
8,000,000 VND
Total payable
108,000,000 VND
  • Two fields on a real invoice are not typed by the issuer and so carry no sample value here: the tax-authority code (mã của cơ quan thuế), which the platform generates on submission for a coded invoice, and the digital signature and lookup QR, which the e-invoice solution applies on validation.
  • A buyer that is an individual may be identified by personal identification number instead of a tax code, and food-and-beverage, transport and platform-delivery invoices each carry extra mandatory lines — see the mandatory-content rules above.
Illustrative only. No official annotated specimen was located from a Vietnamese authority, so both the layout and the contents are LookupTax's, assembled from the particulars described above. Every company name, tax code (MST), symbol and amount is fictional — including the MST formats, which are shown as placeholders rather than valid numbers.

E-invoicing status​

Status: mandatory, and has been since 1 July 2022 for the general VAT-invoicing population under Decree No. 123/2020/ND-CP; the regime has since been progressively re-engineered rather than newly mandated.

  • System. E-invoices run through the tax authority's e-invoice platform (hoadondientu.gdt.gov.vn) and, since Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP, through a wider set of connected channels including POS/cash-register data feeds for the businesses and sectors listed under Invoice requirements. [1]
  • Formats. Coded (mã của cơ quan thuế) and non-coded e-invoices continue side by side; Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP separately defines the new commercial e-invoice for exporters and the POS-generated e-invoice, and adds a rule that where the signing time differs from the invoicing time, the tax authority must receive the coded-invoice request (or the transmitted data, for non-coded invoices) no later than the next working day after the invoice is created. [1]
  • Scope — B2B, B2G, B2C. The mandate is not phased by counterparty type the way some CTC regimes are; instead it is phased by taxpayer profile. Since 1 June 2025, foreign suppliers without a permanent establishment in Vietnam conducting e-commerce or digital-platform business may voluntarily register to use Vietnamese VAT e-invoices — the first time the e-invoice Decree has named non-resident digital sellers as an eligible (rather than obliged) user class. [1] Separately, the POS-generated e-invoice channel (above) is the mandatory B2C-facing track for household/individual businesses at or above VND 1 billion revenue and for listed consumer-facing enterprises.
  • Phase timeline. Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP's POS/cash-register e-invoice mandate took effect with the Decree itself, 1 June 2025; where a taxpayer in scope cannot yet meet the technology-infrastructure conditions, the tax authority is directed to plan support and notify a transition date rather than immediately penalise, but continued non-conversion after that support and notice is treated as a violation. [1]
  • What changes 1 July 2026. Decree No. 254/2026/ND-CP takes over as the decree detailing e-invoices and e-documents under the new Tax Administration Law No. 108/2025/QH15, effective from that date. [2] This guide could not verify from the Decree's own text whether it formally replaces Decree No. 123/2020/ND-CP (as amended) or runs alongside it during a transition — see the FAQ on this point, and do not assume your existing setup is automatically void.

Filing and payment​

Filing frequency. VAT is a monthly-return tax by default. A taxpayer already on monthly filing may instead file quarterly if its total revenue from goods and services in the immediately preceding calendar year was VND 50 billion or less, calculated as the sum of the "total taxable revenue" line across that year's VAT returns (including any dependent units/business locations filing centrally through head office); newly operating taxpayers may choose quarterly filing from the outset, then must base the following calendar year's frequency on their first full 12 months of revenue. Once chosen, monthly-or-quarterly is fixed for the calendar year. (Decree No. 126/2020/ND-CP, Article 9(1).) [1] A taxpayer that no longer qualifies must switch back to monthly filing from the first month of the following quarter, and the tax authority can force the switch (with back-calculated late-payment interest) if it detects an ineligible taxpayer still filing quarterly. [1]

Input-tax recovery, refunds and bad debt. VAT Law Article 15 sets out several refund routes rather than a single mechanism:

  • Export refund: undeducted input VAT of VND 300 million or more in a month/quarter with export activity is refundable, capped at 10% of that period's export revenue; any excess carries forward. (Art. 15(1))
  • Investment-project refund: input VAT accumulated during an investment project's construction phase, undeducted after offsetting against ongoing operations, is refundable once it reaches VND 300 million or more; a refund claim for a completed project/phase must be filed within 1 year of completion. (Art. 15(2))
  • 5%-rate businesses: a business producing only 5%-rate goods/services with VND 300 million or more of undeducted input VAT after 12 consecutive months or 4 consecutive quarters is refundable. (Art. 15(3))
  • Dissolution/bankruptcy, foreign-traveller purchases (see Cross-border rules), ODA and humanitarian-aid projects, diplomatic-exemption purchases, and refunds under an international treaty each have their own route. (Art. 15(4), (5), (6), (7), (8))

[2] This guide did not locate a codified bad-debt VAT relief mechanism distinct from ordinary input-credit rules in the sources reviewed — treat that point as unconfirmed.

Late payment. Under Tax Administration Law No. 108/2025/QH15, the late-payment charge is 0.03% per day on the overdue tax amount; a taxpayer self-assesses and pays it, and the tax authority determines and notifies the amount if it remains unassessed 30 days after the underlying tax, other levy or penalty was paid. [3]

Exemptions​

VAT Law Article 5 lists 28 categories of goods and services that are outside the scope of VAT (đối tượng không chịu thuế), including: unprocessed or only-preliminarily-processed crop, forestry, livestock and aquaculture products sold by their own producer; breeding stock and planting material; animal feed and aquafeed; sea salt and refined/iodised salt; public housing sold by the State to its sitting tenants; irrigation and agricultural land-preparation services; transfer of land-use rights; life, health, student/educational and other person-related insurance, plus livestock, crop and other agricultural insurance; credit, securities-trading, capital-transfer, debt-sale, foreign-exchange and derivative financial services; medical and veterinary services; funeral services; teaching and vocational training; state-budget-funded broadcasting; publishing of political/legal/scientific books and newspapers; public bus/tram/inland-waterway passenger transport; scientific-research equipment and oil-and-gas-exploration equipment not yet producible domestically; national-defence and security products; humanitarian and non-refundable aid imports; goods in transit, temporary import-export, and trade between/with free-trade zones; technology and IP transfer, and software; unwrought precious metals; certain unprocessed mineral/resource exports; artificial body-part and disability-aid products; household/individual-business goods and services with annual revenue of VND 200 million or below (Art. 5(25) — see Registration); and a further list of specific import categories (gifts within duty-free limits, luggage allowance, disaster-relief goods, border-resident trade, and antiquities). [1]

Exempt is not zero-rated — VAT Law Article 5(27) states the consequence explicitly. A business selling only the goods/services listed in Article 5 cannot deduct or reclaim the input VAT it paid on its own purchases, except where the 0% rate under Article 9(1) separately applies. [1] A 0%-rated exporter, by contrast, keeps full input-VAT recovery. This is the single most consequential distinction in the Law for anyone pricing a Vietnamese supply chain, and it is easy to conflate the two categories because both show "0" tax on an invoice.

Special regimes.

  • Fuel VAT exemption, 16 April – 30 June 2026. National Assembly Resolution No. 19/2026/QH16 (adopted 12 April 2026) exempted gasoline, diesel, kerosene, mazut and aviation fuel from VAT declaration and payment at the sale and import stages for this window, while keeping input VAT creditable. [2] This has now expired.
  • Direct-method / small-business regime. Businesses below the VND 1 billion deduction-method threshold pay VAT as a flat percentage of revenue rather than the standard credit-invoice method — see Rates and Registration.
  • Free-trade-zone (khu phi thuế quan) treatment. Goods and services traded between Vietnam's domestic market and a free-trade zone, or between free-trade zones, sit outside the scope of VAT under Article 5(20), and goods/services sold to a free-trade-zone business for direct use in export production can qualify for the 0% rate under Article 9(1)(a)–(b) — two different regimes depending on the transaction, not a single blanket rule. [1]
  • Gold, silver and gemstones. Buying, selling and processing of gold, silver and gemstones is carved out of both the deduction and direct-on-revenue methods into its own direct-on-value-added calculation (VAT Law Art. 12(1)), with negative value-added in a period carried forward within the same calendar year only, not into the next year. [1]

This guide did not identify a separate cash-accounting scheme for VAT in the sources reviewed — treat that point as unconfirmed.

Offences and penalties​

Vietnam keeps administrative and criminal exposure genuinely distinct, and both carry real figures.

Offences (criminal). Tax evasion is a criminal offence under Article 200 of the Penal Code No. 100/2015/QH13, as amended by Law No. 12/2017/QH14 (effective 1 January 2018). [1] The conduct it covers includes: not filing a tax-registration or tax-declaration dossier, or filing more than 90 days late; not recording revenue relevant to tax liability in the accounting books; not issuing an invoice on a sale, or recording a lower value than actually paid; using illegal invoices/documents to reduce tax payable or inflate an exemption, reduction, deduction or refund; using other illegal documents to misstate tax payable or refundable; misdeclaring imported/exported goods without a supplementary declaration after customs clearance; deliberately not declaring or misdeclaring tax on imports/exports; colluding with a consignee to import goods; and misusing tax-exempt or preferential-use goods without declaring the change of use. Penalties scale with the amount evaded:

Amount evaded (individual)FineImprisonment
VND 100 million – under 300 million (or under 100 million with a prior administrative sanction/conviction for tax evasion or related offences)VND 100 million – 500 million3 months – 1 year
VND 300 million – under 1 billion, or organised/repeat/abuse-of-position offendingVND 500 million – 1.5 billion1 – 3 years
VND 1 billion or moreVND 1.5 billion – 4.5 billion2 – 7 years

An additional fine of VND 20 million–100 million, a 1–5 year ban from holding certain positions or practising certain trades, or partial/total asset confiscation may also apply; a commercial legal entity (company) convicted under the same Article faces its own, separate fine scale. [1]

Penalties (administrative — invoicing). Decree No. 125/2020/ND-CP, Article 24, sets graduated fines for invoice-issuance violations, distinct from the criminal exposure above:

ConductFine
Not issuing a summary invoice as required, or not invoicing promotional/gift/sample goodsVND 500,000 – 1,500,000
Issuing an invoice at the wrong time, without causing a tax-payment delayVND 3,000,000 – 5,000,000
Wrong-time invoicing that does cause a delay; out-of-sequence numbering; backdating; wrong invoice type not self-corrected; issuing before tax-authority approval of e-invoicing; invoicing during a suspended-business period; or a POS e-invoice issued without the required tax-authority data connectionVND 4,000,000 – 8,000,000
Not issuing an invoice at all when selling goods or providing a serviceVND 10,000,000 – 20,000,000

A warning (not a fine) applies to minor, self-corrected timing or sequencing errors, and the offender is separately compelled to issue the missing invoice on the buyer's request. [2] This guide did not verify Decree No. 125/2020/ND-CP's separate late-registration and late-filing penalty scales from an official source within its research window — treat those figures, specifically, as unconfirmed; only the Article 24 invoicing figures above were read directly.

Interest on late payment. 0.03% per day on the overdue amount — see Filing and payment.

Frequently asked questions​

Is Vietnam's VAT rate 10% or 8%? Every invoice I see looks different.​

Both are correct, for different goods. The statutory standard rate under Article 9(3) of VAT Law No. 48/2024/QH15 is 10%. But National Assembly Resolution No. 204/2025/QH15 (17 June 2025) cuts that rate by 2 points — to 8% — for the period 1 July 2025 to 31 December 2026, for every good or service that would otherwise sit at 10%. Six categories are carved out of the cut and stay at 10%: telecommunications; financial, banking, securities and insurance activities; real-estate business; metal products; mined/extracted products (except coal); and goods/services subject to special consumption tax (except petrol). [1]

My household business has VND 900 million in annual revenue. Do I register for VAT, and do I use the same invoice as a big company?​

You are inside the VAT net — the exemption only covers household and individual businesses with annual revenue of VND 200 million or below (VAT Law Art. 5(25), effective 1 January 2026). But at VND 900 million you are below the VND 1 billion threshold in Article 21 of Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP, so you calculate VAT by the direct method on revenue (1% for goods distribution, 5% for services, 3% for production/transport tied to goods, 2% for other activities) rather than the deduction method, unless you voluntarily register for the deduction method with full accounting records. If your revenue reaches VND 1 billion, or you fall into a listed consumer-facing sector, Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP additionally requires a POS-generated e-invoice, connected to the tax authority. [2] [3]

I'm a Vietnamese company buying software from a foreign SaaS vendor with no office here. Who pays the VAT — them or me?​

It depends on the channel and your own tax method. By default, you (the Vietnamese buyer) are the taxpayer under VAT Law Article 4(3) — a self-assessed reverse charge. But if you apply the deduction method and the purchase runs through an e-commerce channel or digital platform, Article 4(4) instead has you withhold and pay the VAT on the foreign supplier's behalf. The foreign supplier may also be directly registered in Vietnam and self-file, in which case a platform or payment-enabled marketplace operator may be the one withholding under Article 4(5). Either way, the applicable rate is 10% (temporarily 8%) under Article 9(3). [2]

A supplier gave me a sales receipt instead of a VAT invoice for a VND 6 million purchase, paid in cash. Can I still deduct the input VAT?​

No, on both counts. A "hóa đơn bán hàng" (sales invoice) — what direct-method and household-business suppliers issue — does not carry deductible input VAT the way a "hóa đơn giá trị gia tăng" (VAT invoice) does. Separately, Article 26 of Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP requires a non-cash payment document for any purchase of VND 5 million or more (VAT-inclusive) before input VAT can be deducted, and treats several same-day cash purchases from the same seller as one combined value for that test. [4]

What actually changes for e-invoicing on 1 July 2026, and does it replace the rules I follow today?​

The Government issued Decree No. 254/2026/ND-CP detailing certain articles and implementation measures of Tax Administration Law No. 108/2025/QH15 on electronic invoices and electronic documents, effective from 1 July 2026 — the same date most of that Law takes effect. It sets out the principles for creating, managing and using e-invoices and e-documents. This guide could not confirm from the Decree's own text that it repeals or replaces Decree No. 123/2020/ND-CP (as amended by Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP); some aggregators claim a full replacement, but the official text does not say so, so do not assume your existing e-invoicing setup is automatically void. [5]

Important websites​

PurposeWebsite
Business registration (triggers automatic tax registration for companies)National Business Registration Portal
Tax registration, e-filing and e-payment (household/individual and direct tax registration)GDT e-tax portal, thuedientu.gdt.gov.vn
E-invoicing platformGDT e-invoice portal, hoadondientu.gdt.gov.vn
Tax-authority policy texts, decrees and circularsMinistry of Finance, mof.gov.vn
Legal-instrument full text and gazette publicationGovernment document database, vanban.chinhphu.vn and Official Gazette, congbao.chinhphu.vn
Import VAT and customs declarationsGeneral Department of Vietnam Customs
Tax-code (MST) validation on LookupTaxVietnam MST validator

The Tax Department's main portal (gdt.gov.vn) was unreachable from this research session at time of writing; the e-tax and e-invoice sub-portals above are separately addressed and were not independently re-tested in this pass.

Recent changes​

  • 2026-07-13 — The Government issued Decree No. 254/2026/ND-CP, detailing certain articles and implementation measures of Tax Administration Law No. 108/2025/QH15 on electronic invoices and electronic documents, effective 1 July 2026. (Chinhphu.vn) — see issue
  • 2026-06-30 — Circular No. 84/2026/TT-BTC established an electronic VAT-refund system for goods carried out of Vietnam by foreign and overseas-Vietnamese travellers, replacing Circulars No. 72/2014/TT-BTC and No. 92/2019/TT-BTC, effective 1 July 2026. (Công Báo No. 436)
  • 2026-05-05 — Decree No. 144/2026/ND-CP amended Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP (itself already amended by Decree No. 359/2025/ND-CP): it adds person-related insurance (life, health, student/educational, agricultural) to the VAT-exempt category, restricts input-VAT deduction on goods/services used for both taxable and non-taxable activities to the taxable portion only, and adds debt/receivable sales and certificates of deposit to the exempt financial-services list — effective 20 June 2026. (vanban.chinhphu.vn)
  • 2026-04-12 — National Assembly Resolution No. 19/2026/QH16 exempted gasoline, diesel, kerosene, mazut and aviation fuel from VAT at the sale and import stages, 16 April – 30 June 2026, with input VAT remaining creditable. (Cục Thuế cơ sở 14, Hồ Chí Minh City)
  • 2025-12-10 — The National Assembly passed Tax Administration Law No. 108/2025/QH15, effective 1 July 2026 (Article 13 and household/individual e-invoicing under Article 26 effective 1 January 2026), rebuilding tax registration, e-invoicing and e-commerce/cross-border tax administration. (Chinhphu.vn)
  • 2025-06-20 — Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP amended 40 of the 61 articles of Decree No. 123/2020/ND-CP on invoices and documents, effective 1 June 2025 — new POS-generated e-invoice mandate, commercial e-invoices for exporters, and voluntary e-invoice registration for foreign digital suppliers. (Chinhphu.vn)
  • 2025-06-17 — National Assembly Resolution No. 204/2025/QH15 cut VAT from 10% to 8% for most goods and services, 1 July 2025 – 31 December 2026. (Chinhphu.vn)
  • 2025-07-01 — Decree No. 181/2025/ND-CP took effect, detailing the registration, rate, deduction and refund provisions of VAT Law No. 48/2024/QH15. (Công Báo)
  • 2024-11-26 — The National Assembly passed VAT Law No. 48/2024/QH15, effective 1 July 2025 (the VND 200 million household-business exemption threshold effective 1 January 2026), repealing VAT Law No. 13/2008/QH12. (Công Báo)