Inheriting or receiving a gift from India as a Vietnam resident

The India side is straightforward: India has no inheritance tax and no gift tax, and the income-tax law exempts anything you receive under a will, by inheritance, or as a gift from a relative, under the proviso to Section 56(2)(x), so the Indian receipt is tax-free. Vietnam is the side to look at, because unlike Singapore or the UAE, Vietnam does tax inheritances and gifts. It does so through its personal income tax, at a flat 10 per cent, but the charge is narrow in three ways worth understanding.

First, it only applies above a threshold: the value has to exceed a floor, which was raised to 20 million dong per receipt from July 2026, before any tax is due. Second, it only reaches specified kinds of asset: securities, capital contributions in a business, real estate, and assets that require registration of ownership, such as vehicles. Ordinary inherited cash and money in a bank account are not on that list, so inheriting money is generally not taxed at all. Third, transfers within close family are exempt, so an inheritance passing between parents and children, spouses, grandparents and grandchildren, or siblings is outside the charge. Between them, these three limits mean many inheritances bear no Vietnamese tax.

The part that is genuinely unsettled is how far Vietnam's 10 per cent reaches a foreign inheritance, one made up of Indian assets, received by a Vietnam resident. In principle Vietnam taxes its residents on worldwide income, which would point towards the inherited Indian real estate or Indian securities being within the charge. But in practice the tax is triggered at the moment you register ownership or use of the asset, and that registration step is something that happens for Vietnamese assets, not for a flat or shares that stay in India. So the machinery of the tax centres on Vietnam-situated, registrable assets, and the treatment of purely foreign-situated inherited assets is not clearly developed in the rules.

The honest position, then, is that for most Indian expats an Indian inheritance is outside Vietnamese inheritance tax, both because cash is exempt and because the tax centres on Vietnamese registrable assets, but the reach over foreign real estate and securities is an open point rather than a settled no. Because India charges no death tax, there is no double-tax issue and nothing to credit in any case. There is no inheritance treaty between Vietnam and India, and none is needed. Our role is the Indian end: the legal heir paperwork, a valuation of the Indian asset, a certificate confirming no Indian death tax, and repatriation of the funds to you, with a clear record of what you received in case the Vietnamese position is ever tested.