Vietnamese Tax Office shifts to nationwide barcode einvoicing within 3 to 5 years

The Vietnamese is considering to roll-out nationwide e-invoicing within 3 to 5 years. Just like other countries, the Vietnamese government is considering a system that requires companies to register their (e)invoicing data in their own system as well in the Vietnamese tax system. After registering, companies can use a barcode in their brick-and -mortar logistics as a printed evidence that an invoice has been registered.

The tax office expects to expand e-invoicing to 50 per cent of all enterprises after 3-5 years, and to all of the country’s enterprises in the following 3-5 years.

Benefits of the Vietnamese E-invoicing Barcode approach

In an interview, the following benefits of this system were propogated:

• All of the invoice’s information would be updated in management systems of businesses and tax administrations, that help to simplify procedures and reduce mistakes and time in tax declarations.
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• In commercial transactions, it is difficult to re-edit the contents of e-invoices due to historical data being saved and secured in computer systems of businesses and tax administrations.
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• For tax management units, e-invoice implementation helps the tax sector by improving the management of taxpayer’s invoices. It would effectively support the tax sector in checking invoices for timeliness and handle the use of illegal invoices.
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• When e-invoices are used nationwide, the risk of fake invoices would be minimised due to all invoice information and categories being available in the data base system of the tax sector.
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• E-invoice applications would allow enterprises to print e-invoices, accessing customers’ signatures as with normal invoices. So that, enterprises should only have to submit their bar code or bring the printed e-invoices for use in product transportation.

Two categories of e-invoicing requirements

It is expected that the Vietnamese business population will be divided into two two electronic invoicing categories: For units with huge numbers of invoice issues, like the Electricity of Viet Nam, water companies, telecommunication and aviation, e-invoices can be issued without verification from the tax sector.

However small and medium enterprises that directly exchange invoices between each other are required to receive the tax sector’s verification.

Implementation route of barcode einvoicing

E-invoicing would be initially implemented in some 200 enterprises, before asking the Ministry of Finance to expand throughout the country. The tax sector expects to expand e-invoicing to 50 per cent of all enterprises after 3-5 years, and to all of the country’s enterprises in the following 3-5 years.