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| Speed up tax refund while keeping it strict and lawful |
Continuously directing to speed up tax refund
Sharing about the process of value added tax (VAT) refund, Ms. Le Thi Duyen Hai - Director of Tax Declaration and Accounting Department (General Department of Taxation) said that in addition to creating favorable conditions for taxpayers to comply with the tax law on the principle of "self-calculation, self-declaration and self-responsibility", according to the Law on Tax Administration, tax refund application dossiers received by tax authorities are classified into 2 cases: "first refund - check later" and "check first - refund later". In both cases there is a deadline for completion. Specifically, for the case of tax refund in advance, it takes maximum 6 working days, and for the inspection before tax refund, it is 40 days from the time the taxpayer submits a complete and correct tax refund dossier for the tax authorities.
The representative of the General Department of Taxation said that in the first 7 months of 2023, the whole industry has issued 9,990 approvals on VAT refund, corresponding to the amount of tax refunded to enterprises of 71,825 billion VND, this is a great effort of the tax sector.
To speed up the tax refund process under the direction of the National Assembly, the Government, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance, on August 9, the General Department of Taxation continued to issue Official Dispatch No. 07/CD-TCT directing the heads of tax departments of provinces and central cities to review and classify VAT refund applications to ensure compliance with regulations. At the same time, assigning the director of the tax department either directly or decentralize to the deputy directors to review each tax refund application, especially those that have been classified, checked first and refunded later to speed up the verification procedure of tax refund requirements.
Especially, the General Department of Taxation directed the tax departments to continue to arrange additional officials and employees to participate in the settlement of VAT refund dossiers to speed up the tax refund process, especially those of exporting enterprises. The aim is to ensure that by the end of September 2023, the VAT refund results will reach and exceed the figure of the same period in 2022. This shows the devotion of the tax sector in creating the most favorable conditions in the settlement of tax refunds for businesses.
93.7% of the tax refund applications have been approved
Explaining the problem that some inspection records took longer than the regulations, Ms. Le Thi Duyen Hai said, due to the fact that in the process of analyzing the actual updated invoice chain data in the enterprise's records, the tax authorities found out that the enterprises had purchased input goods, deducted and requested tax refunds to the seller, who had fled from their business addresses, not declare and pay tax. Some businesses have stopped operating.
In particular, there are businesses that are under investigation for illegal invoice trading, including cases reported by the police to the tax authorities, which are being in investigation.
In order to control the tax refund strictly comply with the law, to avoid loss of tax revenue, including woodchip exporters, the General Department of Taxation has issued documents to direct tax authorities to verify the origin of purchased timber when receiving the tax refund application from these enterprises. This is a necessary step to cooperate with businesses and collectors to comply with the requirements on declaration to fulfill tax obligations to the State right from the input stage.
Regarding the idea that the tax authority puts all timber exporting enterprises at risk and performs "check first, refund later", the General Department of Taxation affirmed that the above statement is not correct. Not all timber enterprises are high risk for taxing. According to the General Department of Taxation, there are many wood enterprises that are refunded in advance within 6 working days and are being handled by the method of "refund first, check later".
A quick summary of data from local tax departments shows that, from 2022 to now, 5,213 applications has been received for VAT refund from the exporter of wood products. In which, the number of dossiers that the tax authorities have processed and refunded is 4,888, accounting for 93.7% of the total number of dossiers received./.
