EY Vietnam review: services, fees, pros and cons

EY — Ernst & Young — is one of the Big Four global professional services networks, alongside Deloitte, KPMG and PwC. The network traces its current form to a 1989 merger of Ernst & Whinney and Arthur Young, and today operates as a federation of independently constituted member firms coordinated by Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee. No single shareholder owns EY: each member firm is a separate legal entity, typically structured as a partnership, and the network is not listed on any stock exchange.

EY has operated in Vietnam since the early 1990s, among the first of the Big Four to establish a local practice, with offices today in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City under the entity Ernst & Young Vietnam Limited. The Vietnam practice delivers the same four global service lines as the rest of the network — assurance (statutory and financial audit), tax, strategy and transactions (deal advisory and M&A), and consulting — serving multinational corporates, domestic conglomerates, financial institutions and, increasingly, foreign-invested real estate vehicles operating in the country.

For an individual foreigner buying one apartment in Hanoi, EY Vietnam is rarely the first call — its practice is built around corporate audit mandates, cross-border tax structuring and transaction due diligence for funds, developers and multinational occupiers, not one-off retail conveyancing. Where the firm becomes genuinely useful to a private buyer is at the more complex end: structuring ownership through a Vietnamese entity, coordinating tax compliance across jurisdictions, or advising an institutional investor operating within the 30% foreign-ownership quota that Vietnam's Housing Law 2023 sets for apartment blocks — see our ownership rules guide for how that quota works in practice.

On the ground, that typically means help obtaining a tax identification number as a foreign taxpayer, structuring recurring rental-income declarations, or advising a fund on the tax treatment of a portfolio acquisition — rather than reviewing a single Sale & Purchase Agreement or chasing a Pink Book application, both of which sit squarely in the remit of a Vietnamese property law firm, not an accounting network. EY does not offer conveyancing, notarisation or title due diligence as standalone retail services; buyers who need that should pair EY's tax work with counsel from a specialist law firm.

English-language service is a genuine strength: engagement teams in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City work routinely with expatriate and institutional clients, and reporting follows EY's global methodology rather than a purely local practice. The trade-off is cost and scale — Big Four engagement letters and minimum fees are calibrated for corporate mandates, so a buyer only needing a routine annual filing on rental income may find a boutique Vietnamese accounting firm faster to engage and materially cheaper.

Legal and tax facts referenced in this review are based on Vietnam's Housing Law 2023 (27/2023/QH15) and Land Law 2024 (31/2024/QH15), both in force since 1 August 2024, together with guidance published by Vietnam's General Department of Taxation. EY Vietnam's network structure and service lines are drawn from EY's own public description of its global member-firm model.