According to the General Department of Taxation’s portal, provincial tax departments are expected to classify, monitor and regularly update information about companies conducting business activities and generating income from the e-commerce sector.

Specifically, these include businesses that earn revenue from foreign organizations (Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon...); online business providers; businesses operating online house rental services through applications (Booking.com, Agoda...); enterprises operating e-commerce trading floors (Sendo, Lazada, Shoppe...), those operating payment intermediary applications (Vnpay, Airpay, Napas...), and transport intermediaries (Grab, Now, Baemin…).

Local tax departments have been told to strengthen coordination with banks, financial companies and payment intermediary service providers to collect business information, income, and transaction cash flow data through accounts of domestic organizations with foreign companies owning and operating online platforms such as Facebook, Google, and YouTube.

These agencies will also compare data of businesses that have e-commerce activities, participate in content creation on online platforms, and generate income from foreign organizations. The aim is to promptly identify cases where there is an obligation to declare and pay tax but no tax registration has been made, and tax has not been paid.

Local tax departments will step up inspection of tax declaration and payment of foreign contractors and collect information about foreign companies and corporations that are providing cross-border advertising, strictly handle cases of tax fraud and tax evasion, and failure to declare and pay tax as prescribed. They will transfer these to police agencies for investigation, verification and handling in accordance with law.

In order to prevent transactions on international payment gateways (including those related to Paypal) that are inconsistent with provisions of Vietnamese law, the State Bank of Vietnam has asked Vietnamese card issuers and representative offices of international card organizations in Vietnam to coordinate, exchange and research measures to identify Paypal-related transactions to ensure compliance with Vietnamese laws.

Duy Vu