The tax authorities of Vietnam collected 1,314 billion VND from businesses that signed online advertising contracts with foreign organizations that did not establish legal entities in Vietnam, such as with Google, Facebook, YouTube as of October 2021.

Meanwhile, tax revenue earned from individuals in Vietnam providing cross-border services (online marketing, online advertising, production of digital content, application of information technology on foreign social networking sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube) reached 498 billion VND.

Total tax revenue from activities of cross-border platforms such as Google, Facebook, YouTube was about 1,812 billion VND, a sharp increase compared to previous years.

In 2015, Vietnam issued Circular 92, which stipulates that individuals who generate income from Google, Facebook, YouTube worth over 100 million VND/year must pay tax at the rate of 5% of value added tax (VAT) and 2% of personal income tax (PIT) based on taxable revenue. However, it is difficult to collect taxes from this subject as they operate on cross-border platforms.

According to statistics of the authorities, Vietnam has about 15,000 channels enabled to make money on YouTube. But only about 30 percent of them are managed by multi-channel networks, which make tax declaration and payment.

In the past two years, tax authorities have tightened the collection of taxes from cross-border activities, especially from individuals. In 2021, the General Department of Taxation also issued Circular 40 allowing individuals to choose the method of tax declaration. Accordingly, individuals can choose a tax payment method based on each transaction.

Duy Vu

Trillions of dong worth of tax arrears collected from online businesses

Hanoi has reinforced inspection over business households and collected tens of trillion of dong worth of tax arrears from businesses via Google, Facebook and Youtube and online sales.

Vietnam boosts e-commerce tax collection

Tax revenue from cross-border e-commerce activities reached more than VND1 trillion (US$43.5 million) in the first nine months of this year.