“Tax obligations often significantly burden businesses operating in Vietnam. To maximize profit, companies will often seek out ways to avoid mandatory tax payments. Vietnamese law enforcement is beginning to vigorously monitor and prosecute acts of tax evasion or tax fraud.“
Acts of Tax Evasion or Tax Fraud
The following acts are considered tax evasion:
1. Failure to file for tax registration; failure to file a tax declaration; filing a tax declaration more than 90 days after the filing deadline or the filing extension deadline;
2. Failure to properly record any revenue included in the taxable income calculation;
3. Failure to issue invoices upon selling goods or services, or recording lower values than the actually paid values of goods or services;
4. Using unlawful invoices or vouchers for accounting costs of goods or input materials in operations that give rise to tax liability, with the intend to reduce payable tax amount; increase the exempted or reduced tax amount or increase the creditable or refundable tax amount;
5. Using other unlawful vouchers or documents to incorrectly calculate payable tax amount or refundable tax amount;
6. Failure to file additional declarations where previous declarations are inconsistent with the actual exported or imported goods within sixty days after the customs declaration is registered;
7. Intentionally failing to declare or making incorrect declarations of customs duties;
8. Colluding with goods consignors to evade duties on imported goods;
9. Using duty-free goods for improper purposes without declaring duty.
Once detected by the Vietnam Government, the enterprise evading tax will face tax arrears and become disqualified for tax incentives.
If a corporation committing acts of tax evasion shows any criminal signs, that corporation and its legal representative are subject to the following punishments: