troubles from some test orders
Reporting to the Ministry of Finance, a reader named Nguyen N.C said that he was having difficulty in the process of closing the tax code to dissolve the enterprise.
According to the presentation, his one-member LLC was established in 2024. Due to the unfeasibility of the business plan, the company decided to dissolve in June 2025. During the operation, the enterprise reported no input and output invoices, fully implementing tax reporting regimes.
However, the "bottleneck" is that at the time of its establishment, the company had to test the delivery of samples to customers via e-commerce platforms to receive feedback. The total amount of money collected was only over 300,000 VND for 3 deliveries. Because of this reduction, tax officials require businesses to register to use electronic invoices to issue additional sales invoices to be eligible to complete the tax code payment procedures.
The business owner believes that this requirement is too complicated compared to the scale of the violation and hopes to find a more "open" solution.
Selling is having to issue invoices
Responding to this issue, the Phu Tho Provincial Tax Department affirmed that the request of tax officials is in accordance with legal regulations. Regardless of whether the order value is small or just a sample or a test product, when there is a sales transaction to provide services, the seller is required to make an invoice.
Specifically, according to Decree No. 123/2020/ND-CP (amended by Decree No. 70/2025/ND-CP of the Government), when selling goods and providing services, sellers must prepare invoices to deliver to buyers. This regulation applies to goods used for promotion, advertising, samples, gifts, gifts.
The content on the invoice must comply with regulations and be consistent with the actual contract or transaction. Therefore, a business collecting money (even if it is only 300,000 VND) without issuing invoices is a violation of tax law.
Facing administrative fines
Not only are businesses forced to reissue invoices (measures to remedy the consequences), they also face a large fine.
The Phu Tho Provincial Tax Department cited Clause 5, Clause 6, Article 24 of Decree No. 125/2020/ND-CP, stipulating a fine of VND 10,000,000 to VND 20,000,000 for the act of not making invoices when selling goods or providing services to buyers.
In addition, this behavior can also lead to other violations such as false declaration, incomplete tax declaration or tax evasion, with additional sanctions.
Unable to dissolve under the category of "not generated revenue"
Regarding the dissolution procedure, the tax authority said that the case of the reader was not eligible for tax settlement exemption.
According to Clause 1, Article 72 of Circular No. 80/2021/TT-BTC, only enterprises from the time of establishment until dissolvement "not generating revenue, not using invoices" do not have to settle taxes. In this case, due to revenue arising (300,000 VND), the enterprise is required to settle the tax with the tax authority until the time of issuance of the dissolution decision according to the provisions of Circular No. 78/2014/TT-BTC.
Thus, to complete the closure of enterprises, taxpayers need to comply with the issuance of additional invoices for old transactions, pay administrative fines (if any) and complete complete tax settlement records.
This is a lesson for startups when conducting pilot transactions in the market: Revenue, no matter how small, needs to strictly comply with regulations on invoices and documents.
