On 20 June 2022, The Government issued Decree No. 41/2022/ND-CP (“Decree 41”) amending and supplementing articles from Decree No. 123/2020/ND-CP dated 19 October 2020 on invoices and documents (“Decree 123”) and Decree No. 15/2022/ND-CP dated 28 January 2022 on policies on tax exemption and reduction (“Decree 15”) under the National Assembly’s Resolution No. 43/2022/QH15 on fiscal and monetary policies to support the socio-economic recovery and development program. Specifically, some notable points of Decree 41 are as follows:

Goods eligible for value-added tax (VAT) reduction does not require separate invoices

According to Decree No. 15, goods and services currently subject to ten percent tax rate will receive a two percent reduction in tax rate from 1 February 2022 to the end of 31 December 2022, except for certain group of goods and services. However, also pursuant to this Decree, only goods and services that have separate invoice are eligible for eight percent tax rate. This is presumed to increase the cost of the business by adding accounting cost and the cost of using invoices.

In order to improve this matter, Decree 41 has amended the law in the direction of stipulating the tax rate of each type goods and services must be clearly stated on the invoice if the goods sold, and services provided are subjected to different VAT tax rates. Thus, according to the new regulations in Decree 41, there is no need to issue a separate invoice for goods eligible for VAT reduction.

No penalty or requirement to correct for not issuing separated eight percent tax rate invoices

According to Decree 41, if the enterprise has issued the invoice, not separated eight percent tax rate invoices but the tax rate is clearly stated (from 1 February 2022 to 20 June 2022), they are still entitled to the reduce VAT rates without having to adjust invoices and administrative fines for taxes and invoices violations. If the subject of VAT reduction has issued an invoice in the form of a pre-printed tickets with unused face value, continual usage requires a stamp according to the price without eight percent VAT or the reduced price by 20 percent of the percentage (%) of revenue beside the pre-printed prices. The law requires goods and services eligible for VAT reduction according to form 1 of Appendix IV of Decree 15 be declared together with the VAT declaration.

Supplementing regulations on the notice of receipt and process of electronic invoices with errors from Decree 123

Decree 41 also issues a notice of receipt and process of electronic invoices that have been issued with errors along with form No. 01/TB-HĐSS replacing form No. 01/TB-SSDT issued together with Decree 123 on regulations on voucher invoice.

Accordingly, from 20 June 2022, businesses is required to use the new Notice form issued together with Decree 41.