New penalties for tax evasion

The Ministry of Finance issued consolidated document No. 27/2026/VBHN-ND-BTC on sanctioning administrative violations related to taxes and invoices. Which includes new regulations on penalties for tax evasion.

In Article 17 of the Document, tax evasion will be penalized according to different levels of regulations.

Clause 1, Article 17 stipulates a one-time fine of tax evasion for taxpayers with one or more mitigating circumstances when committing one of the following violations:

Failure to submit tax registration dossiers; failure to submit tax declaration dossiers or submit tax declaration dossiers after 90 days, from the date of expiration of the tax declaration dossier deadline or from the date of expiration of the extension of the tax declaration dossier deadline, except for the cases specified in points b, c, clause 4 and clause 5, Article 13 of this document;

Failure to record in the accounting book revenues related to determining the amount of tax payable, failure to declare, incorrect declaration leading to a shortage of tax payable or increasing the amount of tax refunded, exempted, or reduced, except for acts specified in Article 16 of this document;

Do not make invoices when selling goods and services, unless the taxpayer has declared tax for the value of goods and services sold and supplied in the corresponding tax calculation period; make invoices for selling goods and services that are incorrect in quantity and value of goods and services to declare taxes lower than reality and are detected after the deadline for submitting tax returns;

Using illegal invoices; using illegal invoices to declare taxes to reduce the amount of tax payable or increase the amount of tax refunded, the amount of tax exempted, reduced;

Using illegal documents; using illegal documents; using documents that do not reflect the true nature of the transaction or the actual transaction value to incorrectly determine the amount of tax payable, the amount of tax exempted or reduced, the amount of tax refunded; preparing procedures and dossiers for destroying materials and goods that are not true to reality, reducing the amount of tax payable or increasing the amount of tax refunded or exempted;

Using goods that are not subject to tax, tax exemption, or tax exemption consideration for improper purposes without declaring the change of purpose of use or tax declaration to the tax authority;

Taxpayers who have business activities during the time of requesting to stop or temporarily stop business activities but do not notify the tax authority, except for the cases specified in point b, clause 4, Article 10 of this document.

In addition, the document also stipulates that a fine of 1.5 times the amount of tax evasion will be imposed on taxpayers who commit one of the acts specified in Clause 1 of this Article without aggravating or mitigating circumstances.

A fine of 2 times the amount of tax evaded shall be imposed on taxpayers who commit one of the acts specified in Clause 1 of this Article and have an aggravating circumstance.

A fine of 2.5 times the amount of tax evaded shall be imposed on taxpayers who commit one of the acts specified in Clause 1 of this Article with two aggravating circumstances.

A fine of 3 times the amount of tax evaded shall be imposed on taxpayers who commit one of the acts specified in Clause 1 of this Article with three or more aggravating circumstances.

Violators are forced to pay the full amount of tax evasion into the state budget; Forced to adjust the loss amount, input value-added tax amount deducted on tax returns (if any).