HÀ NỘI — The Finance Ministry has proposed special measures to ease tax filing requirements and reduce administrative penalties for taxpayers who have ceased operations without completing tax code closure procedures or no longer operating at their registered addresses, aiming to help them to either resume business or formally exit the market in an effort to speed up tax data clean-up campaign.

Under a draft National Assembly resolution, outstanding business licence fees and corresponding late payment charges accrued through the end of 2025 would be written off automatically through the tax authority’s management system, without requiring taxpayers to submit applications.

Tax authorities planned to complete the writing-offs within six months from the resolution’s effective date.

Việt Nam stopped collecting business licence fees from January 1 under National Assembly Resolution 198/2025, but outstanding liabilities accrued through 2025 remain subject to collection.

Before the change, annual fees for business licensing ranged from VNĐ1 million to VNĐ3 million (US$38-$114), depending on registered charter or investment capital.

As of the end of 2025, about 764,000 taxpayers owed a combined VNĐ1.45 trillion in outstanding business licence fees, the ministry’s statistics showed.

The debts are concentrated among small businesses, household businesses and individuals; the ministry added that in some cases, the costs of tracking down taxpayers and enforcing collection exceed the amounts likely to be recovered.

Conditional relief

The draft also proposes conditional waivers of late-payment charges for the two groups of active taxpayers.

To qualify, taxpayers would have to submit complete applications to restore or close their tax codes, with the tax authority receiving the applications no later than June 30, 2028. They would also have to pay all outstanding principal tax debts by that deadline.

The ministry estimates that businesses awaiting dissolution owe a combined VNĐ27.805 trillion, including VNĐ18.09 trillion in principal tax debts and VNĐ9.715 trillion in late-payment charges.

The ministry said late-payment charges continued to accumulate even where taxpayers had been inactive for years. Requiring full payment of both principal debts and accumulated charges could leave some businesses unable or unwilling to complete closure procedures.

The proposed mechanism is intended to encourage taxpayers to settle principal liabilities and either restore operations or formally exit the market.

The ministry has also proposed reducing penalties for late tax filings.

Under the proposal, eligible entities that submit all outstanding tax returns would be given reductions, meaning that they would only have to pay 30 per cent, 50 per cent or 70 per cent of the standard penalty, depending on when they complete their filings by June 30, 2027, between July 1 and December 31, 2027, and between January 1 and June 30, 2028, respectively.

Household businesses and individuals paying tax under the declaration method would pay half the prescribed penalty after submitting all outstanding returns. Household businesses paying tax under the presumptive method would be exempt from the administrative penalty.

The relief would not apply to cases where penalties have already been imposed by formal decisions, or to tax evasion and tax frauds under investigation or prosecution, or before the courts.

The cost of completing dissolution procedures remained a major obstacle for businesses that had been inactive for years, the ministry said, adding that the reductions would encourage inactive taxpayers to complete dissolution procedures.

Simplified procedures for long-inactive taxpayers

The ministry has also proposed exempting businesses from filing tax returns for periods in which no tax liability arose.

Businesses, cooperatives and household businesses whose registration certificates had been revoked but whose tax codes remained active could also be exempt from filing outstanding returns for those periods. However, they would still have to complete tax finalisation returns up to the date of revocation.

Businesses and household businesses inactive for more than 10 years could be considered for tax code closure if they had no outstanding tax debts and were not subject to tax inspections, investigations, prosecution or trial.

According to the ministry, more than 753,000 taxpayers had remained in the two inactive categories for over 10 years.

As of October 23, 2026, Việt Nam had 2,518,440 taxpayers classified as having ceased operations without completing tax identification number closure procedures or as no longer operating at their registered addresses.

In the first 10 months of 2026, tax authorities completed tax identification number closures for 777,835 cases, including 143,786 businesses and organisations and 634,049 household businesses and individuals.

The ministry said the special measures were intended to resolve long-standing tax liabilities, reduce compliance costs and improve the accuracy of tax administration data. — VNS