Vietnam's Household Business Overhaul: Three Decrees Rolling Out in H1 2026

[Vietnam's Household Business Overhaul: Three Decrees Rolling Out in H1 2026]

01｜Decree 141: Tax-Exemption Threshold Doubles, Sparing 2.56 Million Households

Decree 141/2026/NĐ-CP — in Vietnamese law, a Nghị định is a government decree, so we'll call this NĐ 141 — was signed on April 29 but took effect retroactively from January 1, 2026, four months earlier.

What it does first is double the revenue threshold below which household businesses owe no tax: from VND 500 million a year up to VND 1 billion. The government estimates this lifts roughly 2.56 million household businesses and individual operators out of the value-added and personal income tax net entirely. The short-term hit to the state budget is around VND 16.65 trillion.

The other side of the same decree tightens the screws. Any household business with annual revenue above VND 1 billion must now use e-invoices linked directly to the tax authority.

02｜Why Now: An Undercounted Tax Base

To understand why Hanoi is moving on this now, look at how big the household business sector is — and how little tax it actually pays.

The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) ran its first dedicated household-business survey at the end of 2025. It found roughly 6.1 million registered household businesses, employing around 10 million people. That's not small. But the sector contributed only VND 32.8 trillion in tax in 2025 — less than 7% of the VND 484.7 trillion collected from the entire non-state sector.

The same survey explains the gap. More than 80% of household businesses saw revenue fall in 2025. Only 1.9% hit the profit level they had hoped for. Looking out two years, more than 30% expect to shrink or shut down, and just 1.8% want to expand.

Most household businesses aren't dodging tax. They simply don't earn enough to cross the threshold in the first place. VCCI deputy secretary-general Đậu Anh Tuấn said the issue isn't just one of livelihoods — it ripples through retail, consumption, and supply chains. Tô Hoài Nam, deputy chair of the SME association, voiced the worry about the other half of the policy, the mandatory e-invoicing above the threshold: "Some people have basic education and have done the same trade their whole life. If you tell them they can't sell anymore unless they can keep books, you're cutting off their livelihood."

By raising the exemption ceiling, NĐ 141 effectively concedes that most household businesses are too small to tax. Those still inside the net move onto e-invoicing.

03｜July 1 Is When a Platform Goes Live, Not When E-Contracts Become Mandatory

Headlines like "Labor contracts face major changes from July 1" have spread widely, but the law itself says something narrower.

The relevant decree is NĐ 337/2025/NĐ-CP. It governs how electronic labor contracts get signed, executed, and built into a national platform. The decree itself already took effect on January 1, 2026, but it sets a key deadline: by July 1, 2026, the national e-labor-contract platform must be fully operational. From that date, anyone who chooses to enter into a labor contract in electronic form has to follow NĐ 337.

This is not a mandate that every company and every employee must switch to e-contracts. The decree's transition clauses are clear: paper contracts remain legally recognized, are not being scrapped or banned, and paper or electronic contracts signed before January 1, 2026 stay in force until they expire. There is no "must convert" requirement.

What goes live on July 1 is a unified national platform giving the two sides of any labor relationship a common standard — if they choose to use it.

Reading "platform launch" as "universal mandate" will create unnecessary alarm on both sides of the table.

04｜Decree 105 on Union Fees: A 12-Year-Old Obligation That Now Enforces Itself

The trade-union-fee decree NĐ 105/2026/NĐ-CP is the third item in this wave. It took effect on May 16 and fleshes out the 2024 Trade Union Law. Coverage has focused on the penalty side — fines of up to VND 75 million — making it look like a new burden on businesses.

But Nguyễn Thúc Khoa, founder of ERIC Capital, pointed out in an interview that the 2% union-fee obligation isn't new at all. It has existed since Decree 191 of 2013 — 12 years ago. Employers owe 2% of the wage base used for social-insurance contributions, regardless of whether they have set up a grassroots union.

For more than a decade, plenty of SMEs simply didn't pay. Enforcement relied on upper-level unions to ask, and if no one asked, no one paid — especially among firms with no grassroots union. What NĐ 105 changes is the enforcement plumbing. From now on, union-fee payments share the same schedule as social-insurance contributions. Because social-insurance data has been digitized, regulators can match payroll records against union-fee records and identify firms that have fallen short — no more waiting for an upper-level union to come knocking.

05｜The Grey Zone Is Shrinking: Bank Accounts, E-Invoices, and Enforcement All Move

Put NĐ 141, NĐ 337, and NĐ 105 together, and a common direction emerges.

NĐ 141 draws a clean line on the tax side: tax-free below VND 1 billion in revenue, mandatory e-invoicing above. NĐ 105 takes 12 years of patchy union-fee enforcement and ties it back to the social-insurance data system.

At the same time, the finance ministry's Circular 50 — a Thông tư, the Vietnamese term for a ministerial directive — published on May 13 sets one more deadline: household businesses with annual revenue under VND 1 billion that haven't yet registered the bank accounts (including personal accounts) they use for business have until July 31 to do so. In other words, even the newly tax-exempt group has to come into the reporting net.

At least some banks are already seeing the effect. Nguyễn Đình Trung, deputy head of digital banking at BVBank, gave concrete numbers: in recent months, household businesses opening or converting to accounts registered under the business's own name (rather than personal) are up about 50%. After BVBank rolled out online account-opening for household businesses on May 10, the number of accounts opened through that channel within 10 days was three times what the traditional branch route delivered.

Enforcement is moving too. Hưng Yên province police issued a public warning to citizens, household businesses, and companies, naming four common evasion patterns: hiding revenue by not issuing invoices, using shell companies to trade fake invoices, hiding e-commerce revenue, and running "two sets of books" accounting software. Separately, the Gia Lai tax office has begun enforcement notices ordering banks to freeze accounts for 30 days against taxpayers in arrears for more than 90 days.

Tax expert Nguyễn Thị Cúc put it plainly: "Many people still think they can hide real revenue, but every transaction now leaves a trace, and authorities can cross-check the data." The real obstacle, she argued, isn't the technology — it's the fear of filing and the habit of hiding.

06｜The Timeline: January 1, May 16, July 1, July 31

Here's the actual sequence:

➤ January 1 (already retroactive): NĐ 141 — household-business tax reform. About 2.56 million households exempted, mandatory e-invoicing above VND 1 billion.
➤ May 16 (already in force): NĐ 105 — union-fee enforcement upgrade. Local labor federations have started outreach.
➤ July 1: NĐ 337 — national e-labor-contract platform goes live.
➤ July 31: Deadline for under-VND-1-billion household businesses to report their business-use bank accounts.

The 6.1 million registered household businesses VCCI counted — plus a larger informal layer that isn't even registered — represent a part of the Vietnamese economy that has historically paid little tax and faced light enforcement. The government's stated goal is to reach 2 million formal enterprises by 2030. Vietnam added roughly 300,000 new enterprises in 2025, but the total active enterprise base is still well short of that target.

Closing the gap means moving more household businesses into the formal enterprise category, and more informal revenue into systems that tax authorities can actually see. The decrees rolling out through the first half of 2026 are designed to do exactly that.

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This article is policy reporting and background analysis. It is not legal, tax, or labor-law advice. For any specific situation, consult a licensed Vietnamese attorney, accountant, or compliance specialist.

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