More than 3 million business households disappear from documents  More than 3 million business households listed by the General Statistics Office (GSO) cannot be found in the General Department of Taxation (GDT) documents.   According to Dau Anh Tuan, head of the Legal Department under the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), Vietnam had 4.658 million non-agriculture business households in 2014 and 4.536 million households in 2013. Tuan said VCCI figures have been taken from the statistics in the reports provided by GSO and Statistical Yearbook. The household business sector has witnessed impressive growth over the last 10 years. It had created 7.9 million jobs by the end of 2014. The figure, according to Tuan is “relatively big”, but still lower than the real figure. However, the number of business households in Vietnam, according to GDT, is just 1.6 million. Nguyen Thi Hanh, a senior official of GDT, showed a report saying that by December 31, 2014, taxation bodies had granted tax codes to 3.018 million business households, but only 1.612 million households had been reported as “operational”. “The others had not been operational though they were granted tax codes,” Hanh explained. She went on to say that the total tax sum collected from business households in 2014 was VND12.36 trillion, which accounted for only 2 percent of the total revenue. The difference in the figures on business households in Vietnam surprised the participants at the workshop on household business development held recently by the VCCI. The difference was so big that it may create misunderstandings about the role and  contribution of the household business sector to the national economy. Can the difference in statistics provided by different agencies be explained by the fact that many business households have had to shut down recently due to the recession? Hanh said: “The input materials for calculation were taken from many different sources and this could lead to different outcomes.” Hanh said the GSO might count the number of business households based on the number of business registration certificates granted. Meanwhile, GDT counts businesses based on the number of tax codes granted and taxpayers. “It may happen that one trader with a tax code does business at three different places,” Hanh said, explaining why GDT shows a lower number of business households. However, Hanh could not explain the 3 million difference between the figures. A representative of the Business Registration Agency under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, who was at the workshop, also could not explain the big gap. VCCI’s Chair Vu Tien Loc said at the 2015 Vietnam Business Forum earlier last week that the private economic sector, including business households, makes up nearly 50 percent of GDP. TBKTSG