Tighten tax collection on celebrities selling livestreams

At a regular press conference on the afternoon of January 7, Mr. Mai Son, Deputy Director of the General Department of Taxation (Ministry of Finance) said that according to regulations, organizations and individuals, regardless of whether they are famous or not, must declare themselves. Pay taxes if you have income from business.

“They must be responsible for the State budget obligations,” Mr. Son said.

Tax authority leaders said they monitor, supervise, and increase tax management measures in some cases of celebrities and influencers (KOL, KOC) participating in livestream sales and affiliate marketing. Among these, the tax industry “filters” the list of celebrities who generate large revenue from livestream sales, to include them in risk classification and inspection.

Along with this group, the number of individuals doing business on e-commerce platforms under review is about 76,428 people. The tax authority has handled violations of 30,029 individuals, collecting and sanctioning 1,223 billion VND.

Recently, the tax industry focused on reviewing Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City – two localities with strong development in services and entertainment and many famous people doing business on digital platforms and e-commerce. Accordingly, the Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department set up a team to exploit the list of individuals who are famous people, create sales content, and livestream on social platforms to be included in this year’s tax inspection. In the first round of review, the tax authority identified 35 artists and celebrities doing business on digital platforms and e-commerce platforms as being required to declare and pay taxes.

In addition, many famous people who sell goods and do business online voluntarily register and pay taxes. For example, in Ho Chi Minh City, a beauty queen paid 4.7 billion VND in taxes.

In Hanoi, the tax authority determined the total revenue from e-commerce activities of a group of celebrities to be approximately 900 billion last year. The amount of tax they paid about 13 billion VND.

Currently, the whole country has nearly 725,000 organizations and individuals doing business on e-commerce platforms, with a total transaction value of more than 75,000 billion VND, according to data from 439 platforms provided to tax authorities. Tax revenue from this field has continuously increased over the past 3 years. Specifically, revenue in 2024 is about 116,000 billion VND, a significant increase compared to the 83,000 – 97,000 billion VND recorded in the previous two years.

The tax agency also built an electronic information portal for individuals to declare and pay taxes. They also connect and share data from ministries and online sales floors to have a sufficient database of taxpayers. “Tax authorities can extract data about taxpayers from Sendo, Lazada, Shopee, TikTok Shop to review declarations, compare and handle violations,” Mr. Son said.

Last year, the scale of Vietnam’s retail e-commerce market was estimated to exceed 25 billion USD, an increase of 20% compared to 2023.

In addition to individuals doing business on e-commerce, tax authorities also tighten management of revenues from foreign suppliers. There are currently 123 foreign suppliers registering for tax through the electronic information portal.

Cumulatively since March 2022 – the time the electronic information portal for foreign suppliers operated, foreign businesses have paid about VND 20,000 billion. Among them, Meta group (Facebook), Google, Microsoft, TikTok, Netflix, Apple… hold about 90% of the market share of cross-border e-commerce service revenue in Vietnam.