A server-room fire wipes out all accounting data — ledgers, e-invoices, vouchers — with no off-site backup. The chief accountant pales; the director panics: what do we show a tax audit? Not rare — and the law provides a process — but delay deepens the damage.
1. Legal duties: lost data doesn’t erase tax duties
The Accounting Law 2015 (88/2015/QH15) requires safe storage and preservation of vouchers and ledgers for statutory periods; the Tax Administration Law 108/2025/QH15 (effective 1 July 2026, replacing the 2019 Tax Administration Law) requires taxpayers to furnish complete dossiers on tax inspection. Fire-caused data loss is a recognised objective event — but not an automatic exemption: the business must evidence the fire (fire-police report, insurer record) and proactively restore all it can. Doing nothing until the audit arrives is the shortest path to tax imposition.
2. Restoration: source by source
Step 1 — Report: notify the directly managing tax authority immediately, with the fire report; also notify the insurer (if data/property cover exists). Step 2 — Re-collect: bank statements (all transactions); e-invoices — re-download from the General Department of Taxation’s system (authority-coded e-invoices live on the national system); ask partners, suppliers and customers for copies of contracts, invoices and reconciliation minutes; cloud accounting software data (if used in parallel). Step 3 — Rebuild books: reconstitute ledgers from recovered vouchers; truthfully declare and explain anything unrecoverable.
3. Tax-imposition and sanction risks
Where books and vouchers can’t be restored to determine tax duties, the tax authority may impose tax — self-determining payable tax from comparables (similar industry/scale), usually higher than reality. Separately, failing to store and preserve vouchers as required draws administrative sanctions on accounting/tax. Conversely, proactive reporting and restoration count as mitigation — cooperation always pays with tax authorities.
4. Lesson: backup is a duty, not an option
After the incident, implement the 3-2-1 backup rule: 3 data copies, 2 different media, 1 off-site/cloud copy; periodically test restore capability (backups that can’t restore are worthless); for e-invoices, ensure independent downloads beyond the software vendor’s system. Backup costs are a fraction of a percent of one data-loss incident.
This article has been quality-reviewed by the FLAW AI Legal Council