Vietnam collects less corporate income tax in 2022 from top 1,000 firms

Corporate income tax (CIT) paid by the 1,000 biggest taxpayers in Vietnam in 2022 fell 14.9% from that in 2021, the General Department of Taxation has said.

The general tax department said the CIT paid by the top 1,000 firms was equivalent to 58.2% of the total CIT revenue in the country last year. From the first list of those firms released in 2016, 301 have featured in the list for all seven years. From 2021 to 2022, 331 firms did not feature in the ranking again.

Regarding those 331 companies, the General Department of Taxation noted some key reasons, including downsized operations in 2022 due the Covid-19 fight in 2021, high incomes from irregular activities, and others.

VPBank, the largest bank in Vietnam by charter capital, overtook Viettel to become the biggest contributor of CIT in the country in 2022, according to the general department.

Military-run telecommunications giant Viettel, the biggest taxpayer in 2016-2021, was dethroned to the second place. The third place belonged to Japanese automaker Honda.

Vietcombank and Agribank, two state-controlled banks, came in fourth and fifth places, respectively. BIDV and MBBank were the two remaining banks in the top 10, at seventh and ninth, respectively.

PV Gas, under state-owned Petrovietnam, was in sixth place. Samsung Electronics Vietnam Thai Nguyen, one of the South Korean giant's Vietnam-based factories, was in eighth, while Mobile World Investment Corporation, one of the biggest retailers in Vietnam, ranked tenth.

VPBank, listed on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange as VPB, paid income tax of VND6.45 trillion ($263 million) in 2022, up 80% year-on-year, according to the lender’s annual report. The growth in paid tax was attributed to the paid amount related to Japan’s SMBC spending $1.37 billion on acquiring a 49% stake in FE Credit, a consumer credit firm of VPBank.

Automaker Honda remained the biggest foreign taxpayer in Vietnam in 2022, the General Department of Taxation reported.

According to the list released by the tax authority, other top foreign or foreign-invested taxpayers were Samsung Electronics Vietnam Thai Nguyen, Samsung Electronics Vietnam, Unilever Vietnam, Heineken Vietnam, Toyota Vietnam, Shinhan Bank Vietnam, Hyundai Thanh Cong Vietnam, Samsung Display Vietnam, and CP Vietnam.

In comparison with the 2021 list, the two new names were Shinhan Bank Vietnam and Hyundai Thanh Cong Vietnam, pushing Hitachi Astemo Vietnam and Suntory Pepsico Vietnam out of the top 10.