E-Commerce Platforms to Declare and Pay Taxes on Behalf of Sellers in Vietnam from April 1, 2025
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- New Tax Law: Starting from April 1, 2025, e-commerce platforms in Vietnam will be required to declare and pay taxes on behalf of sellers. This initiative is aimed at improving tax compliance and ensuring that businesses in the digital economy contribute their fair share to government revenues.
- Who’s Affected: This regulation will impact foreign and domestic sellers operating on platforms like Lazada, Shopee, and Tiki. These sellers will no longer be individually responsible for declaring their taxes; the platforms will handle these obligations directly.
- Purpose: The Vietnamese government is targeting greater tax compliance in the rapidly growing e-commerce sector. With the increase in online shopping and cross-border trade, the authorities are keen to secure a more efficient tax collection system.
- Key Responsibilities for E-Com Platforms: Platforms will need to:
- Register with tax authorities.
- Collect & pay taxes on behalf of sellers.
- Ensure accurate reporting of transactions.
- Tax Rates: The tax rates and specifics about which transactions will be taxed were not fully disclosed in the article, but it is implied that both value-added tax (VAT) and corporate income tax could be applied.
Our Analysis:
The move to make e-commerce platforms responsible for tax declaration and payment is part of a broader global trend where governments are tightening tax policies around the booming digital economy. In countries like Vietnam, where online retail is rapidly expanding, such reforms are necessary to ensure that digital businesses—especially international ones—don’t escape taxation.
For Vietnamese sellers, this law may ease the burden of compliance, as they will no longer need to handle the complexities of tax filings themselves. However, the reliance on platforms to manage these taxes could create challenges for both sellers and the platforms themselves, such as ensuring the correct categorization of products & services for tax purposes.
For platforms, this new law places additional responsibilities and operational costs on them. They’ll need to upgrade their systems and collaborate more closely with the Vietnamese tax authorities, which could strain smaller platforms or those with less robust infrastructures.
This policy also suggests Vietnam is looking to level the playing field between local & international e-commerce players. Foreign companies, who previously had less accountability for taxes, will now be included in the tax net, thus supporting the growth of local businesses in a competitive environment.
In summary, this shift represents a significant step towards more regulated e-commerce practices in Vietnam & could set a precedent for other countries in Southeast Asia & beyond. It will be interesting to observe how well platforms adapt to the changes and whether sellers will experience smoother tax management as a result.