Vietnam payroll and employer costs (2026)

What does payroll cost an employer in Vietnam?

In Vietnam an employer pays about 23.5% of an employee's gross salary in statutory on-costs, and a further 10.5% is withheld from the employee's own pay. The employer's 23.5% is three compulsory insurance funds — 17.5% social insurance, 3% health insurance and 1% unemployment insurance — plus a 2% trade-union fee.23

This is where most summaries disagree, and the reconciliation is simple. The three compulsory insurance funds alone come to 21.5% for the employer and 10.5% for the employee. Adding the 2% trade-union fee — which every employer pays whether or not it has an in-house union — takes the real cash on-cost to 23.5%. Pages that quote 21.5% have simply left the union fee out. For a foreign employee there is no unemployment insurance, so the insurance funds come to 20.5% and the all-in employer on-cost is about 22.5%.

An employer of record carries all of these contributions as the legal employer, so you do not run the Vietnamese payroll yourself; for how that is structured and why it is lawful, see whether an EOR is legal in Vietnam. The rest of this page itemises each line, the caps that limit it, and what the figures look like at real salary levels.

What changed for Vietnam payroll in 2026?

Several statutory changes reset the 2026 figures. The dated summary below is itemised and sourced in full in the sections that follow.

Where does the 23.5% go?

The employer's 23.5% is four lines. Three are compulsory insurance funds — 17.5% social insurance, 3% health insurance and 1% unemployment insurance, together abbreviated SHUI. Social insurance funds retirement and survivorship pensions, sickness and maternity pay and occupational-accident cover; health insurance funds public medical treatment; unemployment insurance funds jobseeker benefits and applies to Vietnamese nationals only.2 For the full system — what each fund covers, the internal split of the 17.5% rate, the reduced occupational-accident element and the monthly filing — see social insurance in Vietnam.

The fourth line is the trade-union fee: a 2% charge on the employer's social-insurance salary fund, paid by every employer whether or not the workplace has an in-house union, and the line most often missing from the "21.5%" figure quoted elsewhere. It is separate from the voluntary member dues of about 0.5% that only an employee who joins the union pays, so those dues do not appear in the net-pay examples below. For who owes it, the công đoàn rules and how it is charged and capped, see the 2% trade-union fee in Vietnam.3 The Vietnamese payroll abbreviations — BHXH, BHYT, BHTN and SHUI — are spelled out in the glossary of Vietnamese HR and payroll terms.

These funds pay for the statutory benefits an employee draws on — paid sick leave, maternity and the pension among them. For the paid leave you fund alongside the contributions, see employee benefits and leave in Vietnam.

How are Vietnam's payroll contributions capped?

Vietnam caps the salary on which contributions are charged, so on-costs do not rise without limit — which is why 23.5% is a true marginal rate only up to the ceiling. Social and health insurance are charged on salary up to ₫50,600,000 a month: 20 times the ₫2,530,000 statutory base salary, which rose on 1 July 2026 under Decree 161/2026/ND-CP and lifted the ceiling to ₫50,600,000 on the same date. The 2% union fee is charged on the same capped base. Guides still quoting a lower cap are out of date.1

Unemployment insurance is capped differently: at 20 times the regional minimum wage, which is ₫106,200,000 a month in Region I for 2026 (20 × ₫5,310,000 under Decree 293/2025/ND-CP). Contributions must also be based on at least the applicable regional minimum wage as a floor. The caps and the base salary behind them are set out in full on social insurance in Vietnam.4

Do foreign employees pay social insurance in Vietnam?

A foreign employee on a Vietnamese labour contract of 12 months or more generally pays compulsory social and health insurance but is exempt from unemployment insurance, which covers Vietnamese nationals only. That makes the employer's insurance about 20.5% plus the 2% union fee — roughly 22.5% all in, with about 9.5% withheld from the employee — as case D below shows. Decree 219/2025/ND-CP, in force since 7 August 2025, narrowed the exemption for intra-corporate transferees, so fewer seconded expatriates keep the exempt status than before.25

Who stays exempt, the Korea social-security agreement, the one-time lump-sum claim and the gaps for other nationalities are a topic in their own right: see social insurance for foreign employees. Sponsoring a foreign hire is a separate step from payroll; for the eligibility, timeline and documents, see work permits for foreign employees.

What does an employee cost an employer in Vietnam? (worked examples)

These Region I examples show the full employer cost and the employee's take-home pay at three Vietnamese salary levels and one foreign-national level, using the rates and caps in force as of October 2026. They assume a single employee with no dependants and no 13th-month bonus, and they show the statutory employment cost only, before EOR Vietnam's service fee. For a Vietnamese national that fee is a flat US$149 per employee per month, whatever the salary, so it adds the same US$149 on top of the statutory total shown in each of cases A to C (as of October 2026); a foreign national who needs a Vietnamese work permit, such as case D, is quoted separately. To run your own figures, use the employer-cost calculator.

Three things stand out. First, the 23.5% figure is a true marginal rate only up to the ₫50,600,000 ceiling: in case C the employer's on-costs are ₫12,185,000 on an ₫80,000,000 salary — an effective 15.2% — because social and health insurance stop at the cap. Second, a foreign hire on the same salary costs the employer slightly less than a comparable Vietnamese hire, because there is no unemployment-insurance contribution, though once the caps apply the difference is small. Third, EOR Vietnam's own service fee does not move with any of this: it is a flat US$149 per employee per month for a Vietnamese national (as of October 2026), with no setup, onboarding, offboarding or payslip fees, so it stays the same across cases A to C while the statutory on-costs change. Separately, a refundable security deposit equal to two months of the employee's employment cost is held for the duration of the engagement and returned at the end, less any unpaid amounts.

How is payroll paid and filed in Vietnam?

Vietnamese payroll must be paid in full, on time and in Vietnamese dong, with an itemised payslip each period and regular filings to the social-security and tax authorities. Wages are normally paid monthly; a delay of 15 days or more obliges the employer to pay compensation interest (Labour Code 2019, Articles 94–97).6

Each pay period the employer must give every employee a payslip showing pay, overtime and night-shift premiums and all deductions — social, health and unemployment insurance and personal income tax. Electronic payslips are allowed, and a bilingual English/Vietnamese payslip is sensible for expatriates (Labour Code 2019, Article 95).6 For the contract, probation and working-hours rules behind payroll, see Vietnam's employment-contract and labour-law basics.

Two filing rhythms apply. Social, health and unemployment insurance are declared and paid monthly to the provincial social-security office, generally by month-end.2 Personal income tax changed on 1 July 2026: employers still withhold it from each payment, but they now declare it quarterly — due 30 April, 31 July, 31 October and 31 January — under a single rule that applies to all income-paying organisations, with an annual finalisation by 31 March (Decree 252/2026/ND-CP and Circular 89/2026/TT-BTC).7

Getting these contributions and filings wrong is costly, and paying a worker as a contractor to avoid the on-costs rarely works — a labour inspector can reclassify the relationship and claw back the unpaid insurance and tax. The comparison in EOR versus independent contractor sets out that exposure. An employer of record removes it by running compliant payroll as the legal employer.