Speaking on September 8 regarding the campaign titled “Cleaning Up Tax Identification Numbers—Unblocking Business Impediments", Mr. Le Long, Deputy Director General of the General Department of Taxation under the Ministry of Finance, stated that the initiative aims to promote compliance and assist taxpayers in proactively fulfilling their legal obligations. The campaign also seeks to screen for financial risks and prevent the exploitation of shell and phantom companies for illegal activities.
Identifying the bottlenecks
In reality, the number of businesses that have ceased operations but have yet to complete procedures for closing their tax identification numbers has continued to rise in recent years. As of June 2026, nearly 600,000 businesses nationwide fell into two categories, including those that had ceased operations but whose tax identification numbers had not yet been deactivated (status 03) and those that were not operating at their registered addresses (status 06).
This huge number has become a major bottleneck in tax administration, prolonging the processing of administrative procedures, wasting social resources, and increasing legal risks for business owners and their legal representatives. More concerningly, some individuals have exploited streamlined business registration procedures to create shell legal entities and ghost companies. These entities do not engage in genuine production or business activities but are primarily used for illegally trading invoices, tax evasion, and fraudulent appropriation of tax revenues. Such practices seriously undermine the effectiveness of state management and create an uneven playing field for legitimate businesses.
Tax Department leaders affirmed that one of the key principles guiding the campaign is to ensure that procedures for restoring the validity of tax identification numbers, deactivating tax identification numbers, dissolving businesses, and terminating business operations are not exploited to legitimize violations of tax and invoice laws or other relevant regulations.
Risk-based screening and classification
Under the “Cleaning Up Tax Identification Numbers—Unblocking Business Impediments" campaign, the Tax Department has adopted a modern approach based on application screening and risk classification. The core principle is to clearly distinguish between two groups: compliant businesses that need support and streamlined procedures to quickly complete dissolution or resume operations; and high-risk businesses suspected of invoice trading or tax evasion, which are subject to inspection, verification, and strict handling.
In addition, the tax authority has upgraded its systems and expanded the functions of the eTax Mobile application to directly notify legal representatives of their tax obligations, enforcement decisions, or temporary exit bans. Notably, the application also allows individuals to directly report cases in which they have been impersonated or had their personal information stolen to establish ghost companies.
According to Le Long, Deputy Director General of the Tax Department under the Ministry of Finance, the implementation of the “Tax Identification Number Cleanup Campaign” is aimed at thoroughly resolving outstanding cases and cleaning up and standardizing taxpayer data while pursuing two objectives simultaneously: facilitating compliance for businesses seeking to resume operations or completing procedures to terminate their operations; and strengthening risk screening and control to prevent the misuse of “shell” and “ghost” companies to commit violations of the law.
According to the Tax Department, the tax sector has worked closely with the Police Department for Administrative Management of Social Order under the Ministry of Public Security to standardize identification information of legal representatives. It has also coordinated with business registration authorities to revoke licenses and fully dissolve businesses that have fulfilled their tax obligations, while working with customs authorities to expedite confirmation of tax obligations.
In the first eight months of the year, the tax sector completed the deactivation of tax identification numbers for nearly 95,000 businesses and organizations, equivalent to 209 percent of the figure recorded in the same period of 2025. The number of businesses and branches receiving tax identification numbers from tax authorities upon establishment in the first eight months was 6.8 times the number that completed procedures to deactivate their tax identification numbers, higher than the ratios of six times in 2024 and 4.5 times in 2025.
The figures show that although the number of businesses completing procedures to deactivate their tax identification numbers has risen sharply as tax authorities have focused on clearing backlogs accumulated over many years, the number of new market entrants remains high compared with the number of businesses terminating their operations.
