Vietnam deactivates tax numbers of nearly 180,000 businesses

Vietnam deactivates tax numbers of nearly 180,000 businesses

6 October 2026: Vietnam's tax authorities have deactivated the tax identification numbers of nearly 180,000 businesses and organisations, and restored the numbers of more than 4,000 others, according to the Tax Department. The figures run to the end of August and were given at the Ministry of Finance's regular third-quarter press briefing in Hanoi on 6 October by Deputy Director General Le Long.

Not yet independently verified. The 180,000 figure comes from one outlet's report of a Ministry of Finance briefing, and we could not open the Tax Department's own release. A second outlet gives a smaller count for an earlier period, so treat the totals as approximate. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

The department says it launched a campaign in May to review and clean up tax registration data. Many of the deactivated cases had been unresolved since 2025 or earlier. As of June, around 600,000 businesses had stopped operating without completing the termination procedures, or were no longer found at their registered address. The department says that if the backlog were left alone, registration data would not reflect the real operating status of businesses, the backlog would keep growing and legal risks would follow.

The stated aim has two sides. Compliant businesses are to be given support to dissolve or resume. Inactive entities, shell companies and so-called ghost companies are to be screened for use in invoice trading and tax evasion. Le Long described the goal as clearly separating compliant businesses from high-risk ones suspected of invoice trading or tax evasion.

A second outlet, Saigon Giai Phong, reports that the General Department of Taxation framed the work as a campaign titled "Cleaning Up Tax Identification Numbers, Unblocking Business Impediments", and that the eTax Mobile app now lets people report that their identity has been used to set up a ghost company. It gives a smaller deactivation count, nearly 95,000 for the first eight months of 2026, so the two reports should not be added together.

For a Vietnamese company that has wound down a subsidiary or an old entity, or one whose address on file is out of date, the practical risk is a deactivated number that blocks invoicing and filings until it is restored. Checking registration status and the address on record is the first step.

Sources

• Vietnam Investment Review: Tax authorities deactivate TINs of nearly 180,000 businesses, 7 October 2026
• Saigon Giai Phong: Tax authorities clean up IDs to target shell businesses (read 2026-10-07), 7 October 2026