If the buyer does not have a TIN in Vietnam, is it requred to have the buyer's TIN in the invoice?

If the buyer does not have a TIN in Vietnam, is it requred to have the buyer's TIN in the invoice?

Based on Point b, Clause 5, Article 10 of Decree 123/2020/ND-CP which stipulates the content of invoices as follows:

Invoice Content

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5. Name, address, TIN of the buyer

a) In cases where the buyer is a business establishment with a TIN, the name, address, and TIN of the buyer displayed on the invoice must correctly follow the business registration certificate, branch registration certificate, household business registration certificate, taxpayer registration certificate, TIN notification, investment registration certificate, or cooperative registration certificate.

In cases where the name or address of the buyer is too long, the seller can abbreviate some common nouns on the invoice such as "Ward" to "P"; "District" to "Q", "City" to "TP", "Vietnam" to "VN" or "Joint Stock" to "CP", "Limited Liability" to "TNHH", "industrial zone" to "KCN", "production" to "SX", "Branch" to "CN"… but must ensure the full house number, street name, ward, commune, district, city to accurately determine the name, address of the business, and be consistent with business registration and taxpayer registration of the enterprise.

b) In cases where the buyer does not have a TIN, it is not required to display the buyer's TIN on the invoice. For some cases of selling goods or providing specific services to individual consumers as stipulated in Clause 14 of this Article, the invoice does not have to display the name, address of the purchaser. In cases of selling goods or providing services to foreign buyers visiting Vietnam, the information about the buyer's address may be replaced with information on passport numbers or immigration documents and the nationality of the foreign buyer.

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Thus, according to the above regulation, for buyers who are individuals without a TIN, when issuing e-invoices to buyers, it is permissible to leave the buyer's TIN field blank.

If the buyer does not have a TIN in Vietnam, is it requred to have the buyer's TIN in the invoice? (Image from the Internet)

When shall the use of e-invoices be suspended in Vietnam?

Businesses, economic organizations, other organizations, households, and individual businesses suspend the use of e-invoices with tax authority code or without tax authority code when they fall into one of the cases outlined in Clause 1, Article 16 of Decree 123/2020/ND-CP as follows:

- Businesses, economic organizations, other organizations, households, and individual businesses terminate the validity of their TINs;

- Businesses, economic organizations, other organizations, households, or individual businesses are verified and notified by the tax authority as not operating at their registered addresses;

- Businesses, economic organizations, other organizations, households, or individual businesses notify the state management authority about temporarily suspending their business;

- Businesses, economic organizations, other organizations, households, or individual businesses receive notifications from the tax authority about stopping the use of e-invoices to enforce tax debts;

- When there are acts of using e-invoices to sell smuggled goods, prohibited goods, counterfeit goods, intellectual property rights infringing goods, discovered and notified by competent authorities to the tax authority;

- When there are acts of creating e-invoices for the purpose of fictitious sales of goods or services to appropriate funds of organizations or individuals, discovered and notified by competent authorities to the tax authority;

- When foreign registration agencies or competent state agencies request that businesses temporarily suspend trading in conditional business lines when it's found that the businesses do not meet the legal business conditions.

Based on the results of inspections, if the tax authority determines that a business is established to illegally trade and use e-invoices or unlawfully use e-invoices to evade taxes, the tax authority will issue a decision to suspend the use of e-invoices; the business will be handled according to legal regulations.

What is an unauthenticated e-invoice in Vietnam?

Based on the regulation in Clause 4, Article 89 of the Law on Tax Administration 2019:

e-Invoice

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3. An e-invoice with the tax authority’s code is an e-invoice that is issued with a code by the tax authority prior to the organization or individual selling goods and providing services sending it to the buyer.

The tax authority’s code on the e-invoice includes a transaction number, which is a unique sequence generated by the tax authority’s system, and a coded string by the tax authority based on the seller's information set on the invoice.

4. An unauthenticated e-invoice is one issued by the organization selling goods and providing services to the buyer without the tax authority’s code.

5. The Government of Vietnam stipulates this in detail.

An unauthenticated e-invoice is an e-invoice issued by the organization selling goods and providing services to the buyer without the tax authority’s code.