Looking up a Vietnamese company by tax code: how to read each field of the public record

Every Vietnamese company has one number that unlocks its public record: the enterprise code, which is also its tax code (locally mã số thuế, or MST). Enter it in the tax authority's taxpayer information lookup or in the National Business Registration Portal and you get the company's registered name, address, legal representative, date of registration, managing tax office and current status. That is usually enough to confirm that the company you are dealing with exists, is the one named on the contract and is still treated as active by the tax authority.

What the record does not tell you matters just as much. It does not show whether the company pays its suppliers, whether its invoices are genuine or whether it has tax debts beyond what a status code implies. This guide walks through the record field by field, explains the traps foreign readers fall into and sets out a short routine a finance or procurement team can repeat for every new counterparty.

The tax code itself: 10 digits, 13 digits, and what each tells you

A Vietnamese company's tax code has 10 digits. The same number is its enterprise code on the business registration certificate, so there is no separate "company number" to ask for. A branch, representative office or other dependent unit that registers for tax separately receives a 13-digit code: the parent's 10 digits, a hyphen and three more digits.

That structure is useful in two ways. First, a 13-digit code on an invoice tells you the seller is a dependent unit of a larger company; the first 10 digits lead you to the parent, which carries the legal liability. Second, a mismatch between the name on a contract and the name returned by the code is the single most common error in onboarding files. It is usually innocent — a trading name, a shortened English name — but it must be resolved before the first payment, because the invoice you receive will carry the registered Vietnamese name and code, not the name your sales team used.

Individuals are different. Since 1 July 2025 the personal identification number on the citizen ID card is used in place of a separate personal tax code. If your counterparty is a sole trader or a household business rather than a company, expect an identification number, not a 10-digit enterprise code, and expect much less information to be public.

Name, foreign name and abbreviation

A company registers a full name in Vietnamese and may also register a name in a foreign language and an abbreviated name. Contracts, invoices and payment instructions should match the registered Vietnamese name; the English name is a convenience.

Points worth checking:

• Legal form in the name. The name includes the type of entity — limited liability company, joint stock company, private enterprise. A supplier presenting itself as a "group" or "corporation" may in fact be a small single-member limited liability company. That is not a problem in itself, but it changes how much weight you give its promises.
• Recent name changes. The registration record reflects the current name. If your purchase history shows a different name for the same code, the company changed its name; ask for the amendment and make sure your vendor master is updated so that invoices match.
• Look-alike names. Two companies can have similar names in different provinces. Always search by code, never by name alone.

Address, province and managing tax office

The registered head office address is where the company must be reachable for official correspondence. Since 1 July 2025 Vietnam has 34 provinces and centrally run cities and no district level, so many records still show addresses written in the old administrative format, or a mix of old and new names. On its own that is not a warning sign; many companies have not yet had a reason to update their registration.

The managing tax office field is more useful than it looks. The tax administration now works in three tiers: the Tax Department at central level, provincial and city tax offices, and grassroots tax offices (Thuế cơ sở). The lookup tells you which office manages the company, which in turn tells you where a query about the company's tax position would be handled. Large companies are often managed at provincial level; smaller ones at a grassroots office.

A practical check: compare the registered address with the address on the contract and the delivery address. Different addresses are normal for a manufacturer with a factory in an industrial park and a head office in the city. What deserves a question is a registered address that cannot be linked to any operating premises at all, especially for a supplier asking for a large advance.

Legal representative, owners and charter capital

The record names the company's legal representative: the person who acts on behalf of the company in transactions and before the authorities. A company may have more than one, and the charter decides how powers are split between them. Anyone else who signs for the company — a sales director, a branch manager — does so under a written authorisation from a legal representative. When the signature on your contract is not the legal representative's, ask for the power of attorney and check that it covers the contract type and value.

The National Business Registration Portal also shows registered charter capital and, for some company types, information about members or founding shareholders. Treat charter capital as a registered figure, not as money in the bank: it shows what the owners committed, not what the company holds today.

For a deeper look at the role of the legal representative, including foreign nationals in that position, our sister site DaiDienPhapLuat.com (in Vietnamese) covers the rules in more detail.

Status: the field everyone reads first and most people over-read

The status field tells you how the tax authority currently treats the tax code — for example, active, temporarily suspended at the company's request, or in the process of closing. Two codes come up often in due diligence:

Neither code, and no other status, tells you that a company is "clean", "safe" or "in debt". An active status means the tax authority has not recorded a stop; it says nothing about the quality of the company's invoices or its payment record. Conversely, a status can lag behind reality by weeks. Use status as a gate — do not onboard or pay a supplier whose code shows it has stopped operating — and then do the rest of the work.

In July 2026 the tax authority began a campaign to clean up the tax code register (Official Dispatch 18/CĐ-CT of 13 July 2026). The review list published that month covered 617,462 enterprises: 291,962 that had stopped operating without completing dissolution and 325,500 not operating at their registered address with tax debts. Expect statuses in the register to move more than usual while that campaign runs, and re-check key counterparties rather than relying on a lookup from last year.

Business lines and registration date

The record lists the company's registered business lines under Vietnam's standard industry classification, with one marked as the main line. Two uses matter to a buyer. First, the goods or services you are buying should fall within, or plausibly next to, the registered lines; a company registered only for software services invoicing you for construction materials deserves a question. Second, some activities are conditional — they need a licence or certificate in addition to registration — and the business line alone does not prove the licence exists.

The date of establishment is also informative. A supplier registered a few weeks before a large tender is not necessarily a problem, but it changes what evidence of capacity you should ask for. So does a long-established company that has recently changed its owners, legal representative, address and name within a short period: each change is lawful; several at once is a pattern worth understanding before you pay an advance.

A short lookup routine for new counterparties

1. Get the tax code in writing from the counterparty, on its letterhead or in the draft contract.
2. Look it up in the taxpayer information lookup and record the result with the date: name, address, managing tax office, status.
3. Cross-check on the National Business Registration Portal: legal representative, business lines, registration date.
4. Match the contract: name, code and signatory against the records; request the power of attorney if someone else signs.
5. Match the first invoice: seller name and code exactly as registered; check the invoice on the tax authority's e-invoice portal.
6. Repeat periodically for suppliers you pay regularly, and immediately before any large advance payment.

Keep the lookup results with the vendor file. If the tax authority later questions an input VAT claim or an expense because the supplier turned out to be non-operating, the dated record of your checks is part of showing that you acted in good faith. It is not a guarantee, but its absence is hard to explain.