A woman shopping online. E-commerce platforms may be asked to pay taxes on behalf of sellers from the beginning of 2026, to reduce compliance costs. — Photo hanoimoi.vn

Specifically, e-commerce platforms with payment function, both domestic and foreign, will be in charge of deducting, declaring and paying taxes on behalf of sellers.

Ministry of Finance said that this proposal aimed to reduce compliance costs for the whole of society.

Under the current regulations, sellers, including business households and individuals, are in charge of declaring and paying taxes while e-commerce platforms only provide information. The tax watchdog, however, found that the information provided by e-commerce platforms remains inadequate and not close to the actual situation, causing difficulty to tax management.

In order to improve the tax management on e-commerce business, it is necessary to ask e-commerce platforms to declare and pay taxes on behalf of sellers, the ministry said.

The finance ministry proposes a roadmap of 12 months after the proposal is passed for preparations, including upgrading the system, technology and database.

A decree detailing the cooperation mechanism between the tax watchdog and e-commerce platforms, responsibilities and obligations of e-commerce platforms in deducting, declaring and paying taxes on behalf of sellers will be issued, the ministry said.

This regulation might cause e-commerce platforms to incur additional costs in upgrading the systems to ensure the determination of deductible and payables by sellers on the platforms. However, the increases will not be significant because the determination is handled electronically, the ministry said.

The ministry said that this regulation will be applied for both domestic and foreign e-commerce platforms.

International experiences from the EU, Australia, Taiwan (China), Thailand and Japan showed that e-commerce platforms declaring and paying taxes on behalf of sellers are popular in terms of tax management on foreign services providers.

In Việt Nam, the taxation on business households and individuals is based on revenue, which is very simple. Thus, requiring e-commerce platforms to deduct, declare and pay taxes is appropriate, the ministry said, adding that this will help optimise tax management and prevent tax loss in e-commerce.

With regard to tax management on foreign services providers such as Facebook, Netflix, Spotify and Apple, the ministry proposed that regardless of whether they have permanent establishment in Việt Nam or not, they must declare and pay taxes. — VNS