Vietnam foreign B2C e-commerce withholding VAT July 2020

Vietnam is to extend VAT to non-resident e-commerce sales to consumers from 1 July 2020. This will apply to goods and digital services.

The obligation to collect the VAT will fall on banks and/or payment providers, including credit card issuers. It will be their responsibility to identify payments by consumers to foreign online sellers, and deduct withholding VAT. There are limited details of how this will be managed.

Nevertheless, non-resident sellers over the local VAT registration threshold, will also be required to VAT register. This may therefore result in a VAT credit where the indirect tax has already been withheld.