Vietnam Upholds Tax Transparency Under Law on Tax Administration

(VIETNAM) — The European Union added Vietnam to its list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions on February 17, 2026, prompting Hanoi to defend its tax transparency record and its cooperation with international standards on information exchange.

Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded publicly after the EU Council decision, framing the listing as at odds with Vietnam’s stated efforts to align with global tax transparency practices and to work with partners on cross-border cooperation.

Pham Thu Hang, spokeswoman for Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on February 22 that Vietnam remains “a responsible member of the international community” and emphasized the country’s commitment to cooperation with the OECD to ensure a transparent and effective tax system.

EU listings of this kind typically draw close attention from investors, banks and corporate compliance teams because they can signal elevated reputational and tax risk, even when day-to-day operations and domestic tax rules in the listed jurisdiction do not immediately change.

Businesses that route payments, financing or intellectual property arrangements through cross-border structures often track such decisions because they can affect documentation demands and tax treatment in counterpart jurisdictions, particularly across EU member states.

Vietnam linked its response to an ongoing reform posture, citing an action-planning process tied to international peer review and to the OECD Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes.

Hang said Vietnam had actively incorporated feedback during the OECD peer review process and recently updated several key legal documents, including the Law on Tax Administration, the Law on Enterprises, and Decree No. 168/2025/ND-CP on corporate governance.

Vietnam is formulating and implementing a national action plan to address recommendations from the OECD’s Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes while strengthening tax cooperation with international partners, including the EU.

The focus of the dispute is tax transparency and information exchange standards, not a change to Vietnam’s domestic tax rates or a shift in Vietnam’s domestic tax laws based solely on the EU listing.

The EU Council added Vietnam and the Turks and Caicos Islands to the blacklist following an OECD Global Forum determination that Vietnam had not yet met standards on the exchange of tax information upon request.

That mechanism generally involves one tax authority requesting specific taxpayer-related information from another jurisdiction for compliance checks or investigations, making response capacity and legal access to records central to the standard.

Vietnam’s inclusion on the blacklist marked a downgrade from its prior status on the EU’s “grey list” of countries committed to reform, which Vietnam had been removed from in October 2025.

While the EU’s listing itself does not change Vietnam’s domestic tax laws, the designation can carry practical consequences because EU member states can apply what the bloc describes as “defensive measures” toward blacklisted jurisdictions.

Those measures can influence how European companies treat payments linked to counterparties in a listed jurisdiction, raising the prospect of higher tax costs, tighter deductibility rules, and additional compliance checks that may vary by EU country and by transaction type.

Companies often watch for whether local tax authorities in EU member states restrict deductibility of expenses tied to payments made to partners in a blacklisted jurisdiction, because that can increase effective tax costs even when underlying commercial arrangements remain unchanged.

Another area businesses monitor is withholding treatment on outbound payments, which can differ depending on whether a payment is a dividend, interest, or a royalty fee, and which may vary across EU jurisdictions even under a shared EU listing framework.

Vietnam pointed to legal and policy updates as part of its transparency push, placing the Law on Tax Administration alongside corporate governance and enterprise-law changes that can support authorities’ ability to access and share relevant records.

The Law on Enterprises and Decree No. 168/2025/ND-CP on corporate governance can matter in this context because corporate governance and record-keeping practices can shape how quickly authorities can respond to information requests, including where control, ownership and management details sit across company structures.

In positioning itself as engaged with the OECD process, Vietnam highlighted cooperation and legal updates as evidence of movement toward transparency benchmarks, even as the EU Council cited the OECD Global Forum determination on exchange of information upon request standards as the reason for the blacklist move.