The Ministry of Finance is drafting a Decree guiding the Law on Tax Administration, expected to take effect from July 1 this year.
In the previous draft Decree, the drafting agency once proposed to require banks, e-wallets, payment intermediary organizations and international card issuers to provide payment account information of users to tax authorities. These units must also coordinate when detecting unusual transactions related to tax obligations.
However, in the latest draft sent to the Ministry of Justice for appraisal, the Ministry of Finance has removed this regulation after receiving comments from relevant parties.
According to the State Bank's comments, requiring banks and payment organizations to provide information may conflict with regulations on customer information security. This agency said that according to current regulations, banks are only allowed to provide information when approved by customers or at the request of competent state agencies.
The State Bank also said that the 2025 Law on Tax Administration does not specifically stipulate the responsibilities of credit institutions, payment service providers and payment intermediaries in providing information to tax authorities.
Current payment law also does not stipulate that payment service providers must identify and collect information about goods and services that customers buy or use for statistics and provision to tax authorities.
According to the State Bank of Vietnam, payment systems currently process millions of transactions every day. Therefore, requiring banks to automatically identify foreign suppliers that "have not registered, declared, or paid taxes" is not feasible.
Before the new Tax Administration Law was promulgated at the end of 2025, the tax industry once required the provision of bank account data to tax authorities according to the provisions of Decree 126/2020 and the 2019 Tax Administration Law.
Accordingly, information such as transactions through accounts, balances and transaction data was previously provided by the bank at the request of the head of the tax authority to serve inspection and examination of tax obligations to be paid. The tax authority is responsible for ensuring the confidentiality of the exploitation and storage of account information of taxpayers.
