Vietnam’s VAT Law 48/2024/QH15 makes foreign e-commerce and digital-platform suppliers VAT taxpayers

What changed in detail

Law No. 48/2024/QH15 on Value-Added Tax, adopted on 26 November 2024 and in force from 1 July 2025, sets out who pays VAT on cross-border digital supplies.

• Article 4(4) names as VAT taxpayers foreign suppliers with no permanent establishment in Vietnam that carry on e-commerce or digital-platform business with organisations and individuals in Vietnam. It also names two withholding parties: foreign digital-platform managers, which withhold and pay the tax on the supplier’s behalf, and Vietnamese businesses using the deduction method that buy such services through e-commerce channels or digital platforms, which do the same.
• Article 4(5) makes e-commerce exchange managers and digital-platform managers that have a payment function withhold, pay and declare VAT on behalf of household and individual businesses selling on their platforms.
• Article 9(3) applies the 10% rate to goods and services not listed at 0% or 5%, expressly including services supplied by foreign suppliers without a permanent establishment to organisations and individuals in Vietnam through e-commerce and digital platforms.
• Article 4(6) leaves the details to the Government, including who pays when the buyer is a Vietnamese deduction-method business. Those rules are in Decree 181/2025/NĐ-CP.

What it means

These provisions are in force; the 2025 amending Law 149/2025/QH15 left Articles 4 and 9(3) as they were. The practical shift is for business-to-business sales: a Vietnamese deduction-method buyer now withholds and pays the VAT itself, so a foreign supplier selling only to such buyers may find the tax collected for it rather than filing for those sales. Sales to consumers and to buyers outside the deduction method stay with the supplier or the platform.

The 10% figure is the statutory rate. Whether a temporary 8% applies depends on the separate reduction resolutions, now Resolution 204/2025/QH15, so check the service against its exclusions. Invoicing by these suppliers is voluntary, under Decree 254/2026/NĐ-CP.