Businesses with delayed tax refunds may be paid 10% interest per year

The Law on Tax Administration stipulates that taxpayers are entitled to receive an interest rate of 0.03% per day when their tax refund is late. However, in a recent submission to the Government on amending the Law on Tax Administration, the Ministry of Finance said that there are currently no specific regulations on the authority, procedures and funding for refunding this interest.

Therefore, the Ministry of Finance believes that the tax authority has no basis to comply with the Law on Tax Administration. This agency proposes to remove the provisions on interest payment in this law. Instead, taxpayers' compensation claims related to interest payable by the tax authority will be subject to the Law on State Compensation Liability 2017.

Specifically, according to this Law on Liability for Compensation, the interest arising from late payment in the absence of an agreement will be in accordance with the Civil Code, at the time of accepting the claim for compensation. Currently, according to the 2015 Civil Code, this interest rate is determined by 50% of the prescribed limit (20%), which is not more than 10% per year.

Thus, businesses and taxpayers who are late in refunding tax can be compensated with an interest rate of no more than 10% per year.

According to the General Department of Taxation, in the first 6 months of the year, this agency issued 8,346 decisions on value-added tax (VAT) refunds, equivalent to nearly VND61,000 billion. At the same time, the General Department of Taxation inspected and examined 2,446 refund decisions, collected and imposed fines of VND105.5 billion, accounting for less than 0.2% of the total tax refund amount.

The VAT refund regulations stated in the Law on Tax Administration, with two cases: refund first, check later and check first, refund later. The deadline for tax refund is calculated from the date the enterprise submits a complete dossier, with refund first, check later being 6 working days, and check first and refund later being 40 days. Normally, nearly 80% of tax refund dossiers are refunded first, checked later.

In fact, VAT refunds are a problem that many businesses have reported in recent times. Many businesses in industries such as wood, paper, and rubber have continuously reported that thousands of billions of VND in tax refunds have been withheld for a long time, causing them to be exhausted.

In addition to the regulations on interest payable for late refunds, according to the Ministry of Finance, the tax authority directly managing the taxpayer will receive the tax refund dossier. However, the authority to decide on tax refunds belongs to the heads of provincial and municipal tax departments.

Because the Director of the Large Enterprise Tax Department (General Department of Taxation) is not allowed to make decisions, some large corporations and groups managed by this unit must transfer VAT refunds to provincial and municipal tax departments for settlement when they arise. The same happens to taxpayers directly managed by tax branches.

This regulation does not facilitate taxpayers, leading to delayed tax refunds, affecting businesses, according to the Ministry of Finance. Therefore, this agency proposed to add the authority to decide on tax refunds to the heads of large enterprise tax departments, tax branches and regional tax branches.

TB (according to VnExpress)

Source: https://baohaiduong.vn/doanh-nghiep-bi-cham-hoan-thue-co-the-duoc-tra-lai-10-mot-nam-391399.html