Recently, there are still incidents of delayed, evasion of compulsory SI payment in many businesses and localities, affecting the settlement of SI and health insurance (HI) benefits for the employees. One of the reasons for this situation is that the current law does not clearly stipulate the delayed, evasion of payment as a basis for applying appropriate sanctions.

According to Article 17 of the 2014 Law on Social Insurance, delayed, evasion of SI payment are strictly prohibited. Depending on the nature and severity of the violation, they may be subject to administrative penalties or criminal prosecution. Article 11 of the Health Insurance Law also stipulates that one of the prohibited acts is not paying or paying insufficient HI according to regulations.

However, in both the Social Insurance Law and the current Health Insurance Law, there are no separate provisions or clear definitions for delayed, evasion of SI and HI payments. This leads to difficulties in applying administrative or criminal measures for each act.

From 2018 to the end of 2023, VSS has sent 417 dossiers to the investigation agency to recommend for prosecution for violation in the fields of SI, HI, and unemployment insurance according to the provisions of Article 214, Article 215, Article 216 of the Criminal Law. However, to date, no case related to Article 216 has been brought to trial, because the Police determined that the violation did not have enough elements to constitute a crime and did not meet the conditions for proceedings to court.

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In order to ensure the legal rights of employees, prevent and strictly handle violations, the State needs to develop and stipulate specific regulations related to delayed, evasion of payment of SI, HI and unemployment insurance in the draft Law on Social Insurance, Law on Health Insurance, Law on Employment and related legal documents. Accordingly, it is necessary to ensure consistent implementation in each type of delayed (paying late beyond the time limit by employers or paying insufficient amount due according to the registered list of employees for SI, HI, unemployment insurance benefits)... and evasion of payment (not registering or not fully registering the number of people required to participate in SI, HI, unemployment insurance; registering a lower salary as a basis for SI contribution; condition for changing from delayed to evasion of payment...) along with addition measures and sanctions to handle these behaviors.

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According to a report on major issues in revising draft Social Insurance Law project (amended) during 5^th specialized National Assembly Meeting recently, the Social Committee of the National Assembly said in order to overcome the shortcomings of organizing the implementation of the current laws when handling cases of delayed, evasion  of SI payment, the draft Law would be revised in the direction of clarifying and separating articles on defining delayed (Article 37), evasion of payment (Article 38), handling of delayed (Article 39), handling of evasion of payment (Article 40) to clearly distinguish acts of delayed and acts of evasion of SI payment, through which appropriate handling measures can be applied.