Form of self-printed withholding certificate in Vietnam

Form of self-printed withholding certificate in Vietnam (Internet image)

1. Form of self-printed withholding certificate in Vietnam

- A withholding certificate must have all the criteria specified in the standard withholding certificate form enclosed with Circular 37/2010/TT-BTC.

- A withholding certificate must bear a sign consisting of any 2 of 20 Vietnamese letters in the upper case (A, B, C, D, E, G, H, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, X, Y) and the year of printing and issuance and the letter T (For example: AB/2010/T, in which AB is the sign; 2010 is the year of issuance; T denotes “tu in” (document printed by the income payer).

- Withholding certificates shall be given continuous ordinal numbers with not more than 7 numerals in a sign.

- A withholding certificate is made in two originals:

Original 1: to be kept at the income-paying organization.

Original 2: to be handed to the person subject to tax withholding.

- Peculiar items and the logo of the income payer may be included in the withholding certificate form. In case income payers need to use bilingual withholding certificates, they shall print items in Vietnamese before those in a foreign language.

(Article 2 of Circular 37/2010/TT-BTC)

2. Subjects and conditions of application in Vietnam

An organization that pays incomes liable to personal income tax, withholds personal income tax and fully meets the following conditions may itself print withholding certificates for issuance to individuals subject to tax withholding:

- Having the legal entity status as prescribed by law;

- Having made tax registration and a tax identification number;

- Being furnished with computers and protection software;

- Not being sanctioned for tax law violations more than one time in the proceeding year.

(Article 1 of Circular 37/2010/TT-BTC)

3. Use of self-printed withholding certificates in Vietnam

- Income-paying organizations shall withhold personal income tax of income earners in their payroll according to regulations and issue withholding certificates to these income earners.

- Withholding certificates shall be used with continuous ordinal numbers (from those dated January 1 to those dated December 31 of the calendar year) without skipping any number and having identical data and signs.

- Certificates improperly made but not yet handed to taxpayers shall be crossed out for cancellation and their originals properly kept.

- Cases of remaking withholding certificates

In case a withholding certificate has been made and handed to the taxpayer but later it is detected to be erroneous and must therefore be remade, the income-paying organization shall make a written record clearly indicating the error, number and date of the erroneous certificate, have it signed by the income earner for verification, and concurrently request the income earner to return the original of the erroneous certificate (the original already handed to the income earner) to the income-paying organization for keeping together with the written record.

After recalling the erroneous withholding certificate, the income-paying organization shall make and hand a new one to the taxpayer, and take responsibility before law for the cancelled withholding certificates.

(Article 4 of Circular 37/2010/TT-BTC)

4. Responsibilities of income-paying organizations permitted to use self-printed withholding certificates in Vietnam

- To notify tax offices directly administrating them of the new withholding certificate forms in case of change of self-printed withholding certificate formats.

- To keep books for monitoring and preservation the withholding certificates already printed and used under the tax and accounting-statistic laws.

- To produce the issued withholding certificates to tax offices and competent state agencies upon examination.

- To report on the use of withholding certificates under regulations.

- To keep data on withholding certificates under the Law on E-Transactions and the Law on Accounting.

(Article 6 of Circular 37/2010/TT-BTC, Clause 3, Article 1 of Decision 814/QD-BTC)

Diem My

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