Telco giant Viettel named biggest tax payer in Vietnam, followed by Japan’s Honda

A list of the 1,000 businesses that paid the most tax last year in Vietnam has been released, and includes three foreign firms in the top 10.

Military-run telco giant Viettel topped the list after earning a pre-tax profit of nearly VND40 trillion ($1.76 billion), followed by Japanese motorbike and automobile producer Honda and state-owned energy group PetroVietnam, according to a report by the General Department of Taxation.

Viettel is Vietnam's largest telecom firm in terms of earnings, and operates mobile networks across 10 countries in Southeast Asia, South America and Africa with further plans for expansion. UK-based Brand Finance ranks its brand value seventh in Southeast Asia and 93rd globally.

Japanese automobile maker Toyota and Dutch brewery Heineken were also named among the top 10 biggest tax payers in Vietnam last year.

The rest of the top 10 was made up of state-owned enterprises: telecom firm MobiFone, major lenders Vietcombank and VietinBank, dairy giant Vinamilk and the Airports Corporation of Vietnam.

Details of how much tax each company paid were not released, but the report said that the 1,000 biggest payers contributed more than VND90 trillion (nearly $4 billion) to the state budget in 2016, up 12 percent from the previous year.

The top 10 accounted for nearly 75 percent of that figure, it said.

Vietnam imposes a corporate tax rate of 20 percent.