Travellers with zero tax debt may be barred from leaving Việt Nam due to a recently passed government decree.
The Latest: On the evening of Nov. 10, Nguyễn Đình Minh Trị, an overseas Vietnamese businessman based in Houston, posted on Facebook under the title “No tax debt, still banned from leaving the country!”
- By Nov. 11, Local Tax Office No. 3 issued a notice canceling the exit suspension, resolving a case that he was told would take 30 to 60 days to fix.
Trị’s Ordeal: On the morning of Nov. 9, as Trị went through entry procedures at the airport, immigration police escorted him into a private room.
- They told him that he “may not be allowed to exit back to the United States” because of a tax issue at Mỹ Việt Trading and Consulting Co. Ltd. (USV) in Hà Nội, a company that has been inactive for nearly 20 years.
According to Trị, an official at Hà Nội Local Tax Office No. 3 told him that his company “does not owe a single đồng in taxes.”
- However, the problem was that the company had not finished the procedures to close its tax code.
His initial Facebook post drew more than 6,100 likes, 610 comments, and 1,500 shares and within two days, the ban was lifted
After the incident, Trị wrote a second post thanking the Ministry of Finance and the Tax Department, noting that a case “stuck for nearly 20 years […] was resolved in just two days.”
- In the comments, Trị stated that he had hired a tax consulting firm to represent him in lifting the ban and to continue closing the tax code, but he added, “However, the main impact was probably from the Facebook post.”
It remains unclear how the tax authority confirmed that Trị had met his obligations within the two days to cancel the ban.
From Legal Professionals: Atty. Ngô Ngọc Trai commented on the situation:
“This is truly a flaw. Whether a business owes taxes, and how much, is something the tax authority itself knows clearly for any business with a tax code. When a business has given notice that it has stopped operating and no longer owes taxes, the authority should proactively close its tax code.”
The Legal Basis: The legal basis for this suspension stems from Decree 252/2026 which took effect on July 1.
- Point c, Clause 1, Article 28 allows authorities to suspend the exit of the legal representative of a business listed as “not operating at its registered address.”
- According to a Luật Khoa Magazine search on Nov. 12, USV (tax code 0101062570) holds this exact status.
Who is Nguyễn Đình Minh Trị? According to VCCI, Nguyễn Đình Minh Trị is a chemical engineer who worked for Shell in the United States before returning to Việt Nam in 1987 to do business.
- He has served as the legal representative of USV since 2000.
Trị is also the father of Nguyễn Thị Quỳnh Tâm, a U.S. citizen who reported being raped at a hotel in Phú Thọ in August and later spoke publicly about the case.
- In a post on Nov. 12, Trị addressed speculation that authorities were making things difficult for him because of “Quỳnh Tâm’s story,” stating that he had “no basis to believe the two matters are related.”
Similar Incidents: A Facebook user named Nguyen Thi Van A** reported receiving an exit suspension notice for a company that stopped operating six years ago, noting that it “never issued a single invoice” and “in all six years, there was not a single reminder notice.”
On Nov. 10, Thanh Niên newspaper reported on two similar cases:
- At noon on Nov. 7, Nguyễn Trần Tâm of Hồ Chí Minh City was stopped from leaving for South Korea over a tax debt belonging to a company founded in 2008 and registered under his ID card number. He had checked eTax and paid everything shown before the trip, but the debt tied to his old ID number did not appear in the system. He could not pay at the airport because it was the weekend and the tax authority could not issue a notice lifting the suspension.
- The 76-year-old mother-in-law of N.D.H. (Hà Nội) was barred from an overseas tour with friends over a debt of just over 3 million đồng owed by a private clinic in Hải Phòng that had closed long ago. The next day, her family contacted the Hải Phòng tax authority and settled the matter, but she had already missed the trip; her 120 million đồng tour fee was not refunded.
Why It Matters: Decree 252/2026 extends exit suspensions to the representatives of businesses in status 06 (taxpayers the tax authority has determined no longer operate at their registered address).
- This means individuals can be barred from travel even if they owe zero taxes.
As of Oct. 23, 2,518,440 taxpayers nationwide were in status 03 (taxpayers that have stopped operating but not finished terminating their tax codes) or status 06.
- Of these, 529,041 stopped doing business in 2015 or earlier.
On Nov. 10, the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) recommended ending exit suspensions for representatives of status-06 businesses whose only violation is procedural.
- VCCI proposed using the measure only when the tax authority has given proper notice and the taxpayer still deliberately fails to act.
Thành Phương wrote this news article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on Nov. 13, 2026. The Vietnamese Magazine translated it into English.
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