Vietnam tax agency cracks down on invoice fraud and hidden transfers

Vietnam’s tax authority is intensifying scrutiny of financial transactions and electronic invoicing to combat tax evasion. By analysing bank account data, it flags risk indicators such as multiple personal accounts used to split revenue, unusually high transaction volumes, and transfer descriptions unrelated to the underlying trade, for example "Happy birthday" or "I love you". The agency also examines more than 25.6 billion e‑invoices collected nationwide, identifying common violations like the sale of counterfeit invoices, the use of so‑called “shell” companies that exist solely to issue invoices, inflated invoice values, and coordinated chains of fictitious transactions designed to legitimize illegal revenue streams. To enhance detection, the tax office is deploying artificial‑intelligence tools, machine‑learning models, and graph‑analysis techniques that automatically highlight anomalous behaviour and flag entities that exhibit suspicious patterns from the moment they are established. These measures aim to improve early risk assessment, improve compliance, and reduce the concealment of taxable income.