Vietnam Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG IN VIETNAM. 1. THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT CONTRIBUTION CEILINGS AND THEY ARE COMPUTED FROM DIFFERENT NUMBERS ON DIFFERENT CYCLES. Social insurance (BHXH) and health insurance (BHYT) cap at 20 times the mức tham chiếu — nationally uniform, 50,600,000 VND a month from 1 July 2026. Unemployment insurance (BHTN) caps at 20 times the REGIONAL MINIMUM WAGE — regional and far higher, 106,200,000 VND in Region I down to 74,000,000 in Region IV from 1 January 2026. For an employee on 60,000,000 VND a month, BHXH and BHYT are computed on 50,600,000 while BHTN is computed on the full 60,000,000. Applying one ceiling to all five branches is the defining Vietnamese payroll error. 2. BOTH CEILING DRIVERS MOVED WITHIN THE LAST EIGHT MONTHS, ON DIFFERENT DATES. The regional minimum wages rose on 1 JANUARY 2026 under Nghị định 293/2025/NĐ-CP (Region I to 5,310,000 VND, an average increase of about 7.2%). The reference level rose on 1 JULY 2026 under Nghị định 161/2026/NĐ-CP, from 2,340,000 to 2,530,000 VND, taking the BHXH/BHYT ceiling from 46,800,000 to 50,600,000. An engine refreshed once a year will have been stale for one of the two for half the year. 3. THE 2024 LAW CHANGED THE CONCEPT, NOT JUST THE NUMBER. From 1 July 2025 the Law on Social Insurance No. 41/2024/QH15 replaced 'mức lương cơ sở' (base salary) with 'mức tham chiếu' (reference level) as the driver of the contribution ceiling and of many benefit calculations. The two currently take the same value, which makes the change easy to miss — but they are different concepts and are capable of diverging, so code and documentation referring to the base salary as the ceiling driver are conceptually wrong even while arithmetically right. 4. THE EMPLOYER PAYS ROUGHLY TWICE WHAT THE EMPLOYEE DOES, AND THE ASYMMETRY IS STRUCTURAL. Employee 10.5% (8% retirement + 1.5% health + 1% unemployment). Employer 21.5% (14% retirement + 3% sickness and maternity + 0.5% occupational accident + 3% health + 1% unemployment). The gap is not a loading — it is two branches the employee does not contribute to at all (sickness/maternity and occupational accident) plus a 2:1 statutory split on retirement and health. 5. THE TRADE-UNION LEVY IS 2% OF THE SAME BASE, EMPLOYER-ONLY, AND USUALLY MISSING. Kinh phí công đoàn is due from every enterprise whether or not a union exists there and whether or not any employee is a member. It takes the real employer burden to 23.5%, not 21.5%. It is distinct from đoàn phí công đoàn, the 1% membership dues paid by individual union members from their own pay — engines commonly model the 1% and omit the 2%, which is exactly backwards. 6. THE OCCUPATIONAL-ACCIDENT RATE IS THE ONE AN EMPLOYER CAN LAWFULLY REDUCE. Standard 0.5%, reducible to 0.3% on application where the prescribed occupational-safety criteria are met. Treat 0.5% as the default and 0.3% as a confirmed per-employer flag. This is why the Vietnamese employer total is quoted as either 21.5% or 21.3%. 7. THE CONTRIBUTION BASE IS NARROWER THAN GROSS PAY BUT BROADER THAN BASIC SALARY. It is contractual salary plus salary allowances plus other fixed supplements determinable in advance. It excludes bonuses tied to performance, meal allowances, fuel, phone and travel allowances, childcare support and similar items that are not fixed in advance. Engines that use gross pay over-contribute; engines that use basic salary alone under-contribute. 8. THERE IS A FLOOR AS WELL AS A CEILING, AND THE FLOOR IS REGIONAL. The contribution base cannot fall below the regional minimum wage for the locality of work. Vietnam therefore has a nationally uniform ceiling sitting on a regionally varying floor — an unusual combination that requires the workplace region to be known even for the branches whose ceiling is national. 9. THE REGIONAL MAP WAS REDRAWN. The 2026 regional minimum wage decree applies across 34 provinces and cities following the administrative consolidation, so the list of which localities sit in which region has changed. A stored region map keyed to the pre-consolidation provinces will misclassify employees, and the consequence falls on both the BHTN ceiling and the contribution floor. 10. EMPLOYEE CONTRIBUTIONS ARE PRE-TAX. All three employee-side contributions are deductible in computing taxable income for personal income tax, so PIT is calculated on pay after social insurance. Employer contributions are deductible business expenses and are not taxable on the employee. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: REAL, ON TWO SPECIFIC POINTS. The contribution FLOOR and the UNEMPLOYMENT-INSURANCE CEILING both derive from the regional minimum wage and therefore differ across Regions I to IV. All five contribution RATES are nationally uniform, and the BHXH and BHYT ceiling is nationally uniform. Model region as a dimension for the floor and the BHTN ceiling only. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON, DELIBERATELY. THE REGION-BY-REGION LOCALITY MAP — not served. Which district falls in Region I, II, III or IV is set out in an annex to Nghị định 293/2025/NĐ-CP and was redrawn for the 34-province structure. The four minimum-wage values are served; the locality assignment must be read off the annex. THE REDUCED 0.3% OCCUPATIONAL-ACCIDENT RATE — not applied. It depends on an individual employer's successful application and cannot be derived from public data. The 0.5% standard is served. ĐOÀN PHÍ CÔNG ĐOÀN (UNION MEMBERSHIP DUES) — not served as a branch. It is 1% of salary paid by individual union members, contingent on voluntary membership and subject to its own cap, so it is not a statutory payroll contribution for an ordinary employee. It is described in the trade-union branch notes so it is not confused with the employer levy. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE / WATCH LIST. (1) The reference level rose to 2,530,000 VND on 1 July 2026 and the ceiling with it — this is the newest change in the record and is already in force. (2) The regional minimum wages are revised roughly annually with effect from 1 January; the 2026 decree took effect on 1 January 2026, so expect a fresh decree around November–December 2026 for 1 January 2027, which will move both the contribution floor and the BHTN ceiling. (3) The Law on Social Insurance 2024 came into force on 1 July 2025 and its implementing decrees (158/2025/NĐ-CP, 188/2025/NĐ-CP) are recent; further guidance circulars should be expected. (4) The rates themselves — 8/14, 0/3, 0/0.5, 1.5/3, 1/1 — have been stable for many years and no change is announced. SOURCING CAVEATS, STATED PLAINLY. The rates and the statutory architecture are those of the Law on Social Insurance 2024, the Law on Employment 2025 and their implementing decrees, and are consistent across every Vietnamese legal and professional source consulted. The 1 July 2026 increase of the reference level to 2,530,000 VND is confirmed from the Government's own portal (baochinhphu.vn) announcing Nghị định 161/2026/NĐ-CP, and the derived ceiling of 50,600,000 VND follows arithmetically from the statutory 20-times multiple. The 1 January 2026 regional minimum wages under Nghị định 293/2025/NĐ-CP are taken from consistent Vietnamese legal reporting: Region I at 5,310,000 VND is stated directly, and Regions II, III and IV at 4,730,000, 4,140,000 and 3,700,000 are DERIVED from the reported inter-region differentials of 580,000, 1,170,000 and 1,610,000 VND — that derivation is arithmetically sound but the three lower figures were not read directly from the decree, and the Region I figure is the only one independently stated. I did not open the text of any of the laws or decrees themselves; the article numbers are cited as given by Vietnamese legal databases. Employee and employer shares are stated separately: the employee figure is what leaves the payslip, the employer figure is cost of employment and is not a deduction.

Get it programmatically

curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/vn/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/vn/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/vn/social-contributions

Other Vietnam series: Policy rate · Value added tax (Thue gia tri gia tang) · VAT registration threshold · Minimum wage (Muc luong toi thieu vung) · Public holidays · Consumer price index (Chi so gia tieu dung) · Corporate income tax (Thue thu nhap doanh nghiep) · Withholding tax rates · Statutory late-payment interest (lãi chậm trả) · Personal income tax (Thue thu nhap ca nhan)

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