The Ministry of Finance has issued Consolidated Document No. 27/2026/VBHN-BTC dated 27 August 2026, consolidating Decree No. 125/2020/ND-CP on administrative penalties for tax and invoice violations together with its three rounds of amendment: Decree No. 102/2021/ND-CP, Decree No. 310/2025/ND-CP and, most recently, Decree No. 291/2026/ND-CP (effective 21 July 2026). It is the most complete current reference for penalty levels applying to tax and invoice breaches. Trustlineax summarises the key provisions for companies and accounting teams to review against.
1. Legal basis
- Consolidated Document No. 27/2026/VBHN-BTC dated 27 August 2026 of the Ministry of Finance.
- Decree No. 125/2020/ND-CP dated 19 October 2020 — the original decree, effective 5 December 2020.
- Decree No. 102/2021/ND-CP dated 16 November 2021 — effective 1 January 2022.
- Decree No. 310/2025/ND-CP dated 2 December 2025 — effective 16 January 2026.
- Decree No. 291/2026/ND-CP dated 21 July 2026 — the latest amendment, effective 21 July 2026.
2. Three principles to establish before checking any penalty
First, penalties on organisations are double those on individuals. For the same conduct, the fine imposed on an organisation is twice that imposed on an individual — except under three articles: Article 16 (under-declaration leading to a tax shortfall), Article 17 (tax evasion) and Article 18 (violations by commercial banks). Penalties under those three articles apply uniformly and are not doubled. Households and business households are fined at the individual rate.
Second, the limitation period differs by category of conduct:
| Category of conduct | Limitation period |
|---|---|
| Tax procedural violations | 2 years |
| Invoice violations | 2 years |
| Tax evasion not reaching the threshold for criminal prosecution; under-declaration leading to a tax shortfall or to an overstated exemption, reduction or refund | 5 years |
Third, expiry of the limitation period does not extinguish the liability. Once the period has expired the taxpayer is not penalised, but must still pay the full tax shortfall, evaded tax, or excess exemption, reduction or refund, together with late payment interest, for the preceding 10 years from the date the conduct is discovered. Where the taxpayer never registered for tax, the recovery extends to the entire preceding period.
3. Tax penalties
| Conduct | Penalty |
|---|---|
| Late tax registration, or late notification of business suspension or resumption (Article 10) | Warning (1–10 days late with mitigating circumstances); VND 1–2 million (1–30 days); VND 3–6 million (31–90 days); VND 6–10 million (91 days or more) |
| Late notification of changes to tax registration details (Article 11) | VND 500,000 – 7 million, depending on the delay and whether the change affects the tax registration certificate or tax code |
| Incorrect or incomplete declaration not resulting in a tax shortfall (Article 12) | VND 500,000 – 1.5 million (items unrelated to determining tax liability); VND 1.5–2.5 million (items on the return or appendices but unrelated to tax liability); VND 5–8 million (items relevant to determining tax liability) |
| Late submission of tax returns (Article 13) | Warning (1–5 days with mitigation); VND 2–5 million (1–30 days); VND 5–8 million (31–60 days); VND 8–15 million (61–90 days, or over 90 days where no tax is payable); VND 15–25 million (over 90 days with tax payable, where the taxpayer voluntarily paid in full before an inspection decision was announced) |
| Under-declaration leading to a tax shortfall or an overstated exemption, reduction or refund (Article 16) | 20% of the under-declared tax or the excess exemption, reduction or refund |
Note on Article 13: where the fine under the applicable band exceeds the tax arising on the return, the penalty is capped at the amount of tax payable — but not below the midpoint of the band in Clause 4 of Article 13.
3.1. Tax evasion — a multiple of the evaded tax (Article 17)
This carries the heaviest penalties, scaled by aggravating and mitigating circumstances:
| Circumstances | Penalty |
|---|---|
| One or more mitigating circumstances | 1x the evaded tax |
| No aggravating or mitigating circumstances | 1.5x |
| One aggravating circumstance | 2x |
| Two aggravating circumstances | 2.5x |
| Three or more aggravating circumstances | 3x |
Conduct treated as tax evasion includes: failing to file tax registration or tax returns, or filing more than 90 days late; failing to record in the accounting books revenues relevant to determining tax; failing to issue invoices on the sale of goods or services; using illegal invoices or documents; using goods that are tax-exempt or not subject to tax for a different purpose without declaring it; and carrying on business during an approved suspension period without notification.
3.2. Entirely new: Article 19a on international tax information exchange
Added by Decree No. 291/2026/ND-CP with effect from 21 July 2026, this article penalises failures to provide information for exchange purposes under Vietnamese law and under the international treaties and agreements on tax to which Vietnam is a party:
| Conduct | Penalty |
|---|---|
| Providing information 5 or more days late | VND 10 – 30 million |
| Providing inaccurate or incomplete information | VND 30 – 50 million |
| Failing to provide information more than 15 days after the deadline (or extended deadline); or colluding with or shielding a taxpayer so as to obstruct the tax authority in collecting or verifying information for international exchange | VND 50 – 100 million |
Notably, conduct penalised under Article 19a is not penalised again under Articles 14, 15 and 19 of the Decree.
4. Invoice penalties
| Conduct | Penalty |
|---|---|
| Giving away or selling invoices (Article 22) | VND 20 – 50 million, together with an order to surrender the illegal gains |
| Issuing invoices at the wrong time, or failing to issue invoices on the sale of goods or services (Article 24) | From a warning up to VND 50 – 70 million, scaled by the number of invoices involved |
| Declaring the loss, destruction or damage of purchased but unissued invoices (Article 25) | Warning up to VND 8 million, depending on the delay in declaring |
| Losing, destroying or damaging issued invoices (Article 26) | Warning (with mitigation, where tax has been declared and paid and supporting records exist); VND 3–5 million; VND 4–8 million; VND 5–10 million depending on the case |
| Breaching invoice destruction requirements (Article 27) | Warning up to VND 8 million |
| Using illegal invoices, or the illegal use of invoices (Article 28) | VND 20 – 50 million, unless already penalised under Article 16 or Article 17 |
| Late preparation or submission of invoice notifications and reports (Article 29) | Warning up to VND 15 million, depending on the delay |
| Late transmission of e-invoice data to the tax authority (Article 30) | From VND 2 million (1–5 working days late) to VND 20 million or more (more than 11 working days late, or transmitting an incomplete number of invoices or data summaries) |
4.1. The biggest change: penalties scaled by the number of invoices
Article 24 now scales the penalty by the number of invoices involved rather than applying a single fixed band as before. For issuing invoices at the wrong time, the penalty runs from a warning (one invoice; promotional or gifted goods) up to VND 50 – 70 million where 100 or more invoices are affected in the sale of goods or services. Failure to issue invoices follows a comparable structure, dealt with separately under Clause 3 of Article 24.
This deserves particular attention from companies with high transaction volumes: a systemic error repeated across many invoices now escalates up a scale rather than stopping at a single band as it did under the previous rules.
5. What companies should take from this
- This is a consolidated document, not a new standalone legal instrument. It is useful for locating the provisions currently in force, but formal citations should still refer to Decree No. 125/2020/ND-CP and the relevant amending decrees.
- The per-invoice scaling in Article 24 is the most significant change for high-volume issuers — it argues for periodic review of invoicing processes rather than waiting to discover errors during an inspection.
- Article 19a mainly affects companies with cross-border transactions that are required to provide information under international tax treaties and agreements. An internal process for responding within the deadline is worth having, given the maximum penalty of VND 100 million.
- Where under-declaration has led to a tax shortfall, a company that identifies the error itself, files an amended return and pays the shortfall in full before an inspection decision is issued is not penalised under Articles 16 and 17 (Clause 3, Article 9). This is a deliberate incentive for early self-correction — periodic internal review has a direct financial value.
This article was compiled by Trustlineax based on Consolidated Document No. 27/2026/VBHN-BTC dated 27 August 2026 of the Ministry of Finance (consolidating Decree No. 125/2020/ND-CP, Decree No. 102/2021/ND-CP, Decree No. 310/2025/ND-CP and Decree No. 291/2026/ND-CP). It summarises the principal penalties and is provided for general reference; the source document contains further detail on sanctioning authority, remedial measures, and violations by commercial banks and related third parties, which should be reviewed in full when applying the rules to a specific case. It does not replace the original legal documents or tailored tax advice.