Proposal to publicize information about business owners abandoning their business addresses

In the draft Decree guiding the Law on Tax Administration 2025 sent to the Ministry of Justice for evaluation, the Ministry of Finance proposed adding tax authorities’ authority to publicize information about payers who do not explain invoice risks after receiving warnings. The tax authority’s management system will record and send a warning directly to the invoice buyer. This is to protect the legitimate rights and interests of buyers and limit damages arising from the use of high-risk taxpayer invoices.

The Ministry also proposed to publicly disclose information about taxpayers who have stopped doing business, to be consistent with the provisions of the Enterprise Law.

In cases where an enterprise or business household abandons its registered business address, the tax authority can publicize information about the company owner and legal representative.

Published data includes full name and partial identification information. To ensure privacy, the Ministry proposes to cover or hide part of the personal identification number. According to the drafting agency, this solution aims to balance the requirements for transparency in tax administration and the protection of citizens’ personal data.

According to the Ministry of Finance, in recent times, many businesses and business households have been established but do not operate, or avoid declaring and paying taxes. There are even cases where businesses and households abandon their business addresses without notifying the management agency.

In addition, authorities also recorded many cases of individuals having their information stolen or falsified to establish businesses. Meanwhile, the Tax Administration Law regulates the responsibilities of business owners, legal representatives and related individuals in fulfilling financial obligations.

The drafting agency believes that disclosing the identities of these individuals helps increase management efficiency. This is also the legal basis to notify them of outstanding tax obligations.

This draft decree still maintains the regulation that tax authorities can disclose information about people who evade, delay tax debt, or do not comply with tax inspection and inspection decisions.

Commenting on the draft decree, the Vietnam Tax Consulting Association proposed clarifying the criteria for determining the level of violations requiring disclosure of taxpayer information. For example, which behavior or the level of administrative penalty is subject to information disclosure by the tax authority.

The Association believes that information about business owners and business households should only be disclosed in cases where the address is omitted and there are signs of tax evasion or affecting the rights and interests of other organizations and individuals. The Tax Consulting Association also recommended that the drafting agency evaluate the impact of partially covering identifying information, because this could reduce the warning value of public information.

However, according to the Ministry of Finance, the Law on Handling of Administrative Violations currently stipulates that competent agencies must publicly disclose sanctioning decisions, including in the field of tax administration. But this law currently does not stipulate specific behavioral thresholds or fines. Therefore, the Ministry still maintains the plan proposed in the draft.

Data from the Ministry of Finance shows that there are currently nearly one million tax debt cases nationwide that are no longer active at the registered address. Of these, about 496,000 cases have debts of less than 1 million VND.

Regarding the temporary exit order for taxpayers who leave their business addresses, the Ministry also proposed to only apply this measure when the debt is 1 million VND or more.

According to the Tax Department, the minimum debt threshold of 1 million VND is looser than current regulations, which do not provide a specific level. This is to eliminate very small debts arising due to technical errors, slow data updates… The tax authority said taxpayers will not have their exit postponed as soon as debt arises. The measure of temporary exit is only applied when the taxpayer leaves the registered business address, is notified by the tax authority but does not fulfill the tax obligation within 30 days.

The notice of exit suspension will be sent via the electronic tax transaction account of the payer or relevant individual, and posted on the tax authority’s electronic portal. According to the Tax Department, this regulation helps people proactively handle tax obligations before implementing exit plans.

The tax authority said that about 7,100 taxpayers proactively fulfilled their financial obligations to have the exit suspension measure cancelled.

Phuong Dung