What are the criteria regarding the e-invoice data storage service providers in Vietnam?

What are the criteria regarding the e-invoice data storage service providers in Vietnam?

Based on Clause 1 and Clause 2 of Article 10 of Circular 78/2021/TT-BTC, the criteria for invoice service providers are as follows:

* Criteria for organizations providing electronic invoice solutions with tax authority codes and solutions without codes for sellers and buyers

Regarding the subject:

- Must be an organization operating in the field of information technology, established according to Vietnamese law;

- Information about the electronic invoice service must be publicly available on the organization's electronic information portal;

Regarding personnel: Must have at least 5 staff members with a university degree in information technology;

Regarding technology: Must have technical infrastructure, IT equipment, and software systems that meet the following requirements:

- Providing solutions for creating, processing, and storing electronic invoice data with tax authority codes and solutions without codes for sellers and buyers according to legal regulations on electronic invoices and other relevant laws;

- Solutions for receiving and transmitting electronic invoice data with service users; solutions for transmitting and receiving electronic invoice data with tax authorities through the organization for receiving, transmitting, and storing electronic invoice data. The information of the data reception and transmission process must be logged for reconciliation purposes;

- Solutions for backing up, restoring, and ensuring data security for electronic invoices;

- Must have documents of successful technical test results on data transmission solutions with organizations that provide services for receiving, transmitting, and storing electronic invoice data.

* Criteria for organizations providing services for receiving, transmitting, and storing electronic invoice data

Regarding the subject:

- Must be an organization established under Vietnamese law, with at least 05 years of operation in the field of information technology;

- Information about the electronic invoice service must be publicly available on the organization's electronic information portal;

Regarding finances: Must deposit a collateral at a legally operating bank in Vietnam or have a guarantee letter from a legally operating bank in Vietnam with a value not less than 5 billion VND to address risks and compensate for damages that may occur during service provision;

Regarding personnel: Must have at least 20 staff members with a university degree in information technology;

Regarding technology: Must have technical infrastructure, IT equipment, and software systems that meet the following requirements:

- Providing solutions for creating, processing, and storing electronic invoice data with tax authority codes according to legal regulations on electronic invoices and other relevant laws;

- Solutions to connect, receive, transmit, and store electronic invoice data with invoice service providers with tax authority codes and without codes for sellers and buyers; solutions to connect, receive, transmit, and store electronic invoice data with tax authorities. The information of the data reception and transmission process must be logged for reconciliation purposes;

- The technical infrastructure system providing electronic invoice services must operate on main data centers and backup data centers. The backup center must be at least 20 km away from the main data center and ready to operate when the main system encounters issues;

- The system must be capable of detecting, alerting, and preventing unauthorized access and network attacks to ensure the security and integrity of the data exchanged between the parties involved;

- Must have a data backup and recovery system;

- Connections with the General Department of Taxation must be through a dedicated leased channel or MPLS VPN Layer 3 or equivalent, including 1 main transmission channel and 2 backup channels. Each transmission channel must have a minimum bandwidth of 20 Mbps; utilize Web Service or Queue with encryption as a connection method; use SOAP/TCP protocol for data packaging and transmission.

Thus, according to the above regulations, an organization providing electronic invoice data storage services must meet the following criteria regarding the subject:

[1] Must be an organization established under Vietnamese law, with at least 05 years of operation in the field of information technology;

[2] Information about the electronic invoice service must be publicly available on the organization's electronic information portal.

What are the criteria regarding the e-invoice data storage service providers in Vietnam? (Image from the Internet)

What conditions must be ensured for provision of e-invoice data storage services in Vietnam?

According to Article 6 of Decree 123/2020/ND-CP, the regulations are as follows:

Preservation and storage of invoices and documents

1. Invoices and documents must be preserved and stored to ensure:

a) Safety, security, integrity, completeness, without changes or deviations throughout the storage duration;

b) Storage must be correct and for the full duration as per accounting law regulations.

2. Electronic invoices and documents are to be preserved and stored using electronic means. Entities, organizations, and individuals have the right to choose and apply a method of preservation and storage of electronic invoices and documents that suits their operational characteristics and technological application capability. Electronic invoices and documents must be ready to be printed or retrieved when required.

3. Invoices printed by tax authorities, printed documents, or self-printed must be preserved and stored in accordance with the following requirements:

a) Unissued invoices and documents must be preserved and stored in a warehouse according to preservation policies for valuable documents.

b) Issued invoices and documents in accounting units must be stored according to regulations on accounting document storage and preservation.

c) Issued invoices and documents in organizations, households, individuals not being accounting units must be preserved and stored as the private property of those organizations, households, or individuals.

Thus, provision of e-invoice data storage services must ensure two criteria:

[1] Safety, security, integrity, completeness, without changes or deviations throughout the storage duration;

[2] Storage must be correct and for the full duration as per accounting law regulations.

Is the format of electronic invoices used for storage purposes in Vietnam?

Pursuant to Clause 1 of Article 12 of Decree 123/2020/ND-CP, the regulation is as follows:

Format of electronic invoices

1. The format of electronic invoices is a technical standard specifying the data type, data length of informational fields serving the transmission, storage, and display of electronic invoices. The format of electronic invoices uses XML (eXtensible Markup Language), created for the purpose of sharing electronic data between IT systems.

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Thus, according to the above regulation, the format of electronic invoices serves multiple purposes, including storage.