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While their employees are covered because they have a labor contract, individual business owners are not required to participate in social insurance because they do not have a labor contract. In essence, individual business owners are also workers, so their participation in social insurance is acceptable, but it is not stipulated by law. Therefore, during the process of amending the Law on Social Insurance, the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs should consider allowing individual business owners to participate in mandatory social insurance because they are both workers and earners.

Regarding this issue, in the discussion at the National Assembly on May 31st, Delegate Hoang Duc Thang (Quang Tri delegation) stated that the compulsory participation of individual business owners in social insurance stems from mainly two reasons: When implementing Government Decree No. 01 (2003) on amending and supplementing some articles of the Social Insurance Charter, due to inadequate understanding and pressure to expand social insurance coverage, some provinces and cities have implemented compulsory social insurance collection and resolved policies for individual business owners. The majority of individual business owners participating in mandatory social insurance are those who directly produce and do business and are both employers and employees, so their need to participate in order to enjoy social insurance benefits is legitimate.

On the other hand, there is currently no policy for voluntary social insurance participation, so the participation of individual business owners in social insurance is not prohibited by related legal documents. The participation of individual business owners in social insurance is essentially a positive contribution to expanding social insurance coverage, in line with Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW on social insurance policy reform.

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According to Delegate Hoang Duc Thang, up until now, the related regulations have not kept up with the demands of practical situation. In other words, practical situations always evolve and develop, but the legal framework has not kept up, leading to this situation. Therefore, it is necessary to amend and supplement the legal regulations to ensure the interests of the people.

Currently, there are about 5.6 million individual business households nationwide. When legal regulations are amended, this will be a very large group, increasing the social insurance coverage, in line with the multi-tiered social insurance policy in Resolution No. 28-NQ/TW. This will also be a group with economic conditions, who can participate in social insurance at a high and sustainable level, contributing to the stability of the country's social security system. Therefore, the issue of over 4,000 individual business owners currently participating in mandatory social insurance, while accounting for a small percentage of the total number of individual business households nationwide, is very important and requires evaluation and research to supplement and improve the related legal basis in the near future./.