If you have ever listed items on social media or a marketplace in Vietnam, you'll have a little more to do from July. The main provisions of the new e-commerce law, enacted on December 10, 2025, took effect on July 1, 2026, and sellers on platforms such as Shopee, Lazada, Tiki, and TikTok Shop are now required to verify their identity via the national digital ID \"VNeID\" (reported late June to July 2026). The anonymous listings that were once taken for granted are now banned, and sellers must disclose their name, address, and registration details under their real name. This directly affects Japanese people running online sales as a side business while living in Vietnam, and Japanese individuals running small retail operations locally, so we organize what changes and how from a practical standpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pillar of the new e-commerce law is the \"electronic identity verification\" of sellers. Platforms must verify the identity of every domestic seller who sets up shop using VNeID (the national digital ID, sometimes called Vietnam's version of the My Number). Individual sellers must publish their name and residential address, and business entities their head-office location and business bases, exactly as registered with the state. Livestream commerce broadcasters (KOLs and KOCs) and people who introduce products through affiliates are also included among those whose identities platforms must verify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until now, it was normal to sell using only an account name, without showing your face or real name. Under the new rules, that anonymity is no longer institutionally permitted. For buyers, this brings the reassurance of seeing \"who is selling,\" but for sellers it is a pressing change: unless you properly register your identity, your listings themselves could be halted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What you'll want to understand alongside identity verification is the change in how taxes are collected. This one started moving a step earlier, from July 1, 2025, under Decree 117\/2025. E-commerce platforms with payment functions became obligated to withhold a set percentage of sales on each transaction on behalf of individual and household sellers and remit it to the state. The tax is deducted at the point when a transaction is completed and payment is confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rate withheld splits by whether what you handle is \"goods\" or a \"service.\" For goods, value-added tax (VAT) is 1% of sales and resident personal income tax (PIT) is 0.5%. For services, VAT is 5% and resident PIT is 2%. The amounts are not large, but for people who used to file on their own, the deposited amount is automatically shaved a little. Conversely, you could see it as the platform taking over part of the hassle of filing your tax return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why did the framework get built out so quickly all at once? Behind it lies the reality that tax revenue from e-commerce is surging. In the first five months of 2025, tax revenue from e-commerce and the digital sector reached 74.4 trillion dong (about 2.85 billion dollars), up 55% year on year. In this period alone, roughly 93,000 businesses and individuals were involved in paying taxes. The larger the market grows, the bigger the challenge of capturing transactions that slip through the tax net while staying anonymous, which is how the current form of running identity verification and withholding at once came about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n