Vietnam Tax Residency: The 183-Day Test Explained

You are a Vietnam tax resident if present 183 days or more in a calendar year, or in the 12 consecutive months from your first day, under Law 109/2025/QH15. A registered or rented home also counts, unless you were here under 183 days and prove residency elsewhere. Residents pay tax on worldwide income; non-residents on Vietnam income.

Say you land in Da Nang in March and don’t leave the country again for the rest of the year. By the time you’ve been present in Vietnam for 183 days or more within that calendar year, you’ve met the first test for Vietnamese tax residency. The same test is met within the 12 consecutive months counted from your first day in the country, not only within the calendar year.

The count runs day by day: your day of arrival is one day and your day of departure is one day. If you fly in and out again on the same day, Decree 253/2026/NĐ-CP counts that as a single day too. Your arrival and departure dates are taken from the immigration authority’s certification on your passport or other travel document, and “present” means physically in Vietnam.

The law behind this test

Vietnam’s tax-residency tests sit in Article 2 of the Personal Income Tax Law, with the detail on counting days and rented homes in Decree 253/2026/NĐ-CP.

The current law is Law 109/2025/QH15, which took effect on 1 July 2026, replacing the old Personal Income Tax Law 04/2007/QH12. The provisions on a resident individual’s income from business and from wages and salaries apply from the 2026 tax period.

Test two: having a “regular residence” in Vietnam

The second way to become a resident individual doesn’t count the days you’re physically here; it looks at your home in Vietnam. It’s having a “regular residence” in Vietnam, which includes a registered residence or a home rented under a lease with a fixed term.

For a foreigner, that registered residence is the address on your Permanent Residence Card, or the address you declared when applying for a Temporary Residence Card. See Temporary Residence Card in Vietnam for how that card itself works, and Temporary Residence Registration in Vietnam for the separate requirement to register where you’re staying with local authorities.

A rented home counts when the days you rent under your lease agreement(s) add up to 183 days or more in the tax year. No single lease needs to run 183 days, because the days under all your leases add up, including leases in more than one place.

“Rented home” here also covers a stay in a hotel, guesthouse, motel or boarding house, or at your workplace or an office, whether you or your employer rent it.

And if you do have a regular residence in Vietnam but were actually present for fewer than 183 days in the tax year, you’re still treated as a resident individual. That’s true unless you can prove you’re a tax resident of another country.

Proof is a Certificate of Residence from that country. If that country has a double-tax agreement with Vietnam but doesn’t issue those certificates, you provide a copy of your passport to prove the period you lived there.

What changes once you know your status

Once you’re a resident individual, Vietnam taxes your income arising both inside and outside the country, wherever it is paid or received, not only what you earn locally. A resident’s wages and salaries are taxed on taxable income, which is total wage income minus insurance contributions and the deductions in Articles 10 and 11 of Law 109/2025/QH15. That taxable income is taxed on a progressive schedule with five brackets:

Each rate applies only to the portion of taxable income inside that bracket.

If you fall on the non-resident side instead, meaning you meet neither the days test nor the regular-residence test, Vietnam taxes only income arising within the country. For wages and salaries specifically, that’s a flat 20% on the total pay you receive for work performed in Vietnam, no matter where in the world you’re actually paid.

You are also non-resident if you were present under 183 days and can prove tax residency in another country.

For how a remote worker paid from abroad registers, files and pays, see Vietnam Income Tax for Remote Workers.

The Law also taxes other kinds of income besides wages, starting with business income; this article doesn’t cover their rates.

Tax treaties can change what you owe

Vietnam’s rules do account for double taxation. Where Vietnam has signed a double-tax avoidance agreement with a country, personal income tax already paid there can be credited against the tax payable in Vietnam, as that agreement provides. This article doesn’t cover any specific country’s treaty terms, so check your own country’s agreement with Vietnam for how the credit works in your case.

Registering a tax code as a foreigner

If you are a foreigner doing business in Vietnam or with income arising in Vietnam, you’re a taxpayer under Vietnamese tax law, as Law 108/2025/QH15 provides. If you register directly with the tax authority, Decree 252/2026/NĐ-CP sets the deadline for first-time tax registration at 10 working days from the date your personal income tax obligation arises.

This isn’t tax advice

This article sets out what Vietnam’s Personal Income Tax Law says, not advice about your own tax situation. Read it as the rule, then check your own facts against it: how many days you were actually present and what kind of home you have here.

More money guides: opening a bank account in Vietnam as a foreigner, driving in Vietnam as a foreigner, and the money hub.

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Not confirmed: Whether, once you reach 183 days, you count as a resident for the whole year or only from day 183 on. Whether a new 12-month window starts if you leave and come back. Ask the Da Nang tax office before you decide how much tax to budget for.

General information checked against the sources listed above, not legal advice for your situation. Rules and office practice change; confirm with the immigration office or a licensed adviser before you act. See how guides are checked.

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