A developer in Berlin, a marketing specialist in Bangkok, a finance adviser in Singapore, all working online for a Vietnamese company: do they need a Vietnamese work permit? The answer turns on a single factor — where the worker’s body is present while working — not on the nationality of the paying company. This article analyses that boundary and the visa, tax and insurance questions that follow. It must be clearly separated from the case of an expert present in Vietnam working for several companies (article EXP-1530 in this wave): there, each Vietnam-based work relationship needs a permit; here, the worker never works on Vietnamese territory at all. The question of where personal income tax is paid for the remote model is analysed in depth in article FDI-LC-1090 on this site; this article goes deeper into the work permit and documentation angle.
1. The work permit regime governs only work performed in Vietnam
The legal framework on foreign workers working in Vietnam (the 2019 Labour Code and Decree 219/2025/ND-CP) regulates foreigners who enter Vietnam and work in Vietnam for an employer. An expert sitting abroad, providing services or performing work online for a Vietnamese company, not physically working on Vietnamese territory, is outside the work permit requirement — no authority issues a permit for work that does not take place in Vietnam, and the Vietnamese company runs no foreign-labour demand procedure for a position located abroad. The relationship is then structured by a service contract or an employment contract under the law of where the worker resides, depending on the model chosen. The converse must also be remembered: “remote” status is not a fixed identity — it holds only while the worker remains outside Vietnamese territory.
2. When the remote expert steps into Vietnam to work
The boundary is crossed the moment the expert enters and performs work in Vietnam: extended in-person meetings, training the team at the office, deploying a project at the plant. From that point, work permit analysis applies in full as for any other foreigner. If total working time in Vietnam in the year is under 90 days and he belongs to the manager, executive director, expert or technical worker groups, the non-issuance case with the notification procedure in Article 7 of Decree 219/2025/ND-CP may apply (analysed in the short-stay article in this section). If he comes to work long-term or regularly, the Vietnamese company must obtain a work permit for the position before he starts. The common error is letting a remote expert “while on a business trip anyway” work at the office for weeks on a tourist visa or visa exemption: entry documents create no right to work, and undocumented work is penalised under Decree 283/2026/ND-CP.
3. Tax and insurance: obligations that do not follow the work permit
No work permit requirement does not mean no tax question. A remote expert’s income may create Vietnamese personal income tax exposure depending on tax residence, income source and the relevant double tax treaty — the full analysis of where tax is paid for this model is in article FDI-LC-1090. From the Vietnamese company’s side, the payment’s true nature must be determined: paying an individual under an independent service relationship, or paying the expert’s foreign company; each structure carries different withholding and documentation duties, and a wrong structure can be recharacterised by the tax authority. On social insurance: an expert working abroad, with no labour contract under the Vietnamese labour regime with a Vietnamese unit, is outside Vietnamese compulsory social insurance; insurance duties (if any) belong to the system where he works and resides. The company should not voluntarily register Vietnamese social insurance for overseas remote staff as a way to “regularise” them — that creates neither a work permit nor the correct contribution subject.
4. Designing a safe remote model for both sides
For the remote model to stand firm, the contract between the Vietnamese company and the expert should state clearly: the work location is outside Vietnamese territory; the scope of work performed online; the mechanism when the expert needs to travel to Vietnam (each trip separately assessed for labour documents before tickets are booked); the applicable tax and withholding terms; and an undertaking not to work on Vietnamese territory without proper labour documents. The company should keep a travel log for all remote experts, accumulating working-presence days in Vietnam per year, to detect early the moment a “remote expert” has in fact become a regular worker in Vietnam who must convert to a work permit. Precisely this silent conversion — from a few business trips into continuous working presence — is the remote model’s largest risk, far larger than the permit question at the starting point.
This article has been quality-reviewed by the FLAW AI Legal Council