Corporate tax, FATF status, sanctions exposure, data-protection law and arbitration enforceability for Vietnam — the facts a founder or counsel checks before incorporating or signing cross-border. Jurisdiction table checked 2026-08-14.
The 1961 Apostille Convention enters into force for Vietnam today. Documents issued in a contracting state and destined for Vietnam — and Vietnamese documents going the other way — take an apostille from the competent authority instead of the consular legalisation chain. Vietnam acceded on 31 December 2025 and the HCCH status table gives 11 September 2026 as the date of entry into force; this change was announced in our diary in advance and applied on the day. Two points worth keeping: the Convention does not apply between Vietnam and a contracting state that objected to its accession, and an apostille certifies the signature and seal, never the content of the document.
Vietnam acceded to the Apostille Convention on 31 December 2025, but accession is not entry into force. The Convention only enters into force for Vietnam on 11 September 2026. Until that date consular legalisation is still required, so we flipped the flag back to “no”.
The headline corporate income tax rate in Vietnam is 20%. Free zones, small-business reliefs and participation exemptions can change the effective rate — treat this as the starting point.
What is this? Corporate tax rate →Vietnam is on the FATF grey list (increased monitoring). Expect slower bank onboarding and more KYC questions for the company and its counterparties — not a prohibition on doing business.
What is this? FATF status →Vietnam is not subject to broad sectoral sanctions programs in our dataset.
What is this? Sanctions exposure →Vietnam is in Annex I of the EU list. Member states apply defensive measures to Annex I jurisdictions; these differ by member state and commonly involve denial of deductions, withholding, or additional reporting. The list is revised twice a year.
The applicable data-protection statute is Decree 13/2023/ND-CP (in force since 2023). If you process EU/UK personal data you also need a valid transfer mechanism into Vietnam.
What is this? Data-protection law →Vietnam is a party to the 1958 New York Convention, so a foreign arbitral award can generally be enforced by local courts — the single most important box to tick before agreeing to arbitration with a counterparty here.
What is this? New York Convention →Vietnam is a party to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention. Public documents — corporate certificates, powers of attorney, notarised papers — need only a single apostille to be recognised in other member states, with no consular legalisation. This materially speeds up cross-border paperwork.
What is this? Apostille Convention (1961) →100% foreign ownership is restricted in Vietnam — a local partner or specific structure is typically required. Price this into the setup.
What is this? Foreign ownership →Vietnam requires a resident/local director. This adds real cost and a governance dependency — include it in the structure.
What is this? Local director requirement →The entity types actually used in cross-border practice, with the name each one carries in its own register.
Names are given as the register uses them and are deliberately not translated — a form is called what it is called. The list covers what is commonly used, not everything the statute allows, and availability to a foreign founder can depend on activity, licensing and residency.
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Lawyers, accountants, corporate and trust providers, real-estate agents, dealers in precious metals and casinos carry anti-money-laundering duties of their own. FATF rates how well a country's law meets three of its recommendations on them.
This rates the quality of the legislation, not whether you personally must run these checks, and not how the law is enforced in practice — FATF measures enforcement on a separate scale that is not in this dataset.
Reports from 2025 onwards use the 2022 methodology; everything earlier uses the 2013 one. Ratings from the two are not directly comparable, which is why the methodology is always shown.
forma. generates NDAs, service, supply and corporate documents wired to this jurisdiction — from lawyer-built templates, processed privately on your device.
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