SBLAW would like to provide you some information/regulations related to company registration and management in Vietnam for your reference, as follows:
Among the most common and available investment vehicles to foreign investor including "company limited", "joint-stock company (shareholding company)", "business-cooperation contract", I would recommend you to choose the "company limited" (same as limited liability company in other jurisdictions) when doing investment in Vietnam.
It's required need at least 3 shareholders to register a JSC, and generally the organizational and management structure of shareholding companies is quite complicated than LLC. One thing, the assignment of shares is always to be taxed (1% of transfer price), while the assignment of contributed capital may not be taxed if there's no generated income (e.g. the transfer price is equivalent to the value of contributed capital).
a/ Regarding JSC:
Statutory voting thresholds for members’ council resolutions in an MLLC:
- Quorum: attending members hold at least sixty five 65% of the charter capital
- at least 75% of the votes of the total number of voting slips of all attending members for special resolutions
- at least 65% of the votes of the total number of voting slips of all attending members for ordinary resolutions
Note that in single-member limited liabilities companies, the above thresholds don’t matter, because there is only one investor. So long as there is no members’ council, most decisions can be unanimously made by the owner or chairperson.
2/ What would be the ideal timeline for such a company set-up?
Procedures for foreign-invested company incorporation include 2 main steps: (1) investment registration, and (2) company registration. Usually it takes 30 - 45 working days from submission of application dossier to complete those procedures.
3/ Is it necessary to be present in Vietnam for the company registration, or lawyer can manage it on site when the investor will provide all the necessary documents on-line?
For implementation of mentioned-above investment registration, no need physical presence of investors in Vietnam to complete them. SBLAW shall handle the procedures on basis of Power of Attorney from Clients to us. However, the post-licensing procedures such as: company bank account registration shall require the presence of legal representative of the new entity in Vietnam.
4/ Minimum investment capital for this business?
Client should register a feasible capital depends on scale of the investment project. Under Vietnamese law , it is noted that, the "charter capital (equity)" of the companymust be fully contributed within 90 days upon its incorporation, according to Vietnam Law on Enterprise 2014.
5/ What documents the investor need to provide to SBLAW to start with company set-up?
The proposed Checklist of documents will be provided later upon Client's confirmation on SBLAW's engagement letter
.
6/ Residency requirement to Legal Representative of Vietnam-based company
Legal representative is required to residing in Vietnam, as a resident. Under point of view of Tax Authority, a person can be deemed as "resident" if he lives at least 183 days per year in the country; or if he has a so-called "Temporary Residence Card" in Vietnam. Thus, technically, if the Legal Rep. has "Temporary Residence Card" and "Power of Attorney" for another manager, he does not need to be physical presence (living) in Vietnam; however, he's still must responsible for any decisions that his proxy made for and on behalf of him. However, if you're a "resident in Vietnam", annually you have to declare and finalize all of your global incomes in Vietnam. For avoidance of this burden, some enterprises choose this legal workaround: they register 2 Legal Representatives, which one person residing in Vietnam, while the other does not. However, the one lives in Vietnam shall be limited his rights/obligations/duties, e.g. he is not allowed to sign contract. Actually, everything shall be decided by the non-residing Legal Representative.
In summary, we kindly suggest 02 options for your consideration:
(1) In case of having 01 foreign Legal Representative, Work Permit and Temporary Residence Card must be apply and obtain for this person; OR
(2) Having from 02 Legal Representatives upward, at least one of them is local and reside in Vietnam.
d/ Social Insurance
Social Insurance applies to enterprises, entities, and organizations that employ employees under indefinite-term labor contracts or under definite-term labor contracts with a duration of three months or more. Both employees and employers are required to contribute to the social insurance fund at statutory rates. The social insurance fund pays allowances for sick leave, maternity leave, work-related accidents, occupational disease, and pensions. From 1 January 2018 all employees with a labour contract term of one month or more, including foreign employees, will be required to pay the compulsory social insurance. Companies should take into account this type of payment when calculating benefits payable to foreign employees, and when developing their business plan.
9/ Profit repatriation concerns (if any)
Foreign investors are permitted to remit their profits annually at the end of the financial year or upon termination of the investment in Vietnam. Foreign investors are not permitted to remit profits if the invested company has accumulated losses. In order to repatriate profits, a company must ensure that it has completed the declaration of corporate income tax of the relevant financial year and issued audited financial statements. The company must then report its intention to repatriate its profits to the tax bureau. If, within 7 days, there is no notice from the tax bureau, the profits may be remitted out. Accordingly, after completing their tax obligations to the State of Vietnam, foreign-invested companies are free to transfer profit abroad and shall not be subjected to withholding tax. However, individual investors are still subject to tax. Please kindly be advised by Tax/Accounting Advisor for further details.
10/ Trademark registration
11/ Deal(s) negotiation and other legal assistance
SBLAW is ready to assist our Clients in various type of legal services including but not limited to: negotiation assistance, drafting contract/agreement, applying licenses, advising on legal matters when operating business activities, etc.
