Prior studies show that paying dividends limits private control benefitsavailable to managers, which may restrict agency problems and the possibilities of managers manipulating earnings. This paper examines whetherdividend policy has an impact on earnings management on a sample oflisted firms on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange in the period from 2012 to2022. We use different proxies of earnings management, including accrualbased and real earnings management. The results show that dividend paying firms have a lower level of earnings management than non-dividendpaying firms. Besides, book-to-market equity ratio, firm size, leverage, return on assets, number of years listed and free cash flow also have impactson earnings management. Our results are consistent when using differentestimation methods, including OLS, fixed effects, random effects, GLS andGMM regressions with STATA 14. We offer some solutions for the government, the firms and investors to better ensure and understand the qualityof firms’ financial reporting