With support from tax officials, it still took 22 days to complete the procedures and receive the money.

At the end of August 2024, VietNamNet Newspaper published an article "The difficulty of applying for a personal income tax refund: If you give up, you lose money, if you continue, it's too tiring", in which it mentioned a case of a person who had submitted a tax refund application since April 2024 but had not been resolved. The reason is because Ms. QP has a household registration in Ho Chi Minh City but is temporarily registered in Thanh Xuan district (Hanoi); 4 agencies that pay her income are located in three districts in Hanoi including Dong Da, Thanh Xuan, and Long Bien.

Over the past 4 months, the taxpayer has repeatedly sent documents via email to relevant tax authorities, each time being rejected for different reasons.

“After reading VietNamNet’s article, we proactively contacted the taxpayer to find ways to support. Through the guidance of the tax authority, the taxpayer fully understood the policies and regulations and submitted additional personal income tax refund documents as prescribed. The tax authority quickly resolved the tax refund for the taxpayer,” a representative of the Thanh Xuan District Tax Department responded on September 29.

Informing the reporter, Ms. QP - the character in the article, said: "On September 4, the Thanh Xuan District Tax Department contacted me and invited me to come to the tax office the next day to work. The department's leaders were very receptive and enthusiastically sent a specialist to guide me on what to do."

Thanh Xuan District Tax Department explained that in April, due to having to settle too many documents, tax officers did not read her case carefully. When they saw her household registration in Ho Chi Minh City, they immediately instructed her to submit online to the Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department, while it was true that she could still submit documents to Thanh Xuan District Tax Department.

bank 5 43.jpg
Taxpayers still have to wait a long time to receive their personal income tax refund. Illustration photo: Hoang Ha

According to the instructions, Ms. QP must submit a request to cancel the tax refund declaration submitted to the Dong Da District Tax Department, Long Bien District Tax Department, and Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department. This application must be sent in paper form by post. When the units receive the application and carry out the procedure to cancel the tax refund declaration that she has submitted, she can "start over": Submit the tax refund declaration online to the Thanh Xuan District Tax Department.

In addition, Ms. QP needs to re-check the amount in the tax deduction invoices of the paying units, because the data in the tax deduction invoices is different from the data declared on the tax system. According to the tax authority's investigation, 2/4 units issuing tax deduction invoices have declared incorrectly. She must wait for these 2 units to re-issue tax deduction invoices to match the data on the tax management system.

On September 9, Ms. QP sent a petition to three tax agencies (Dong Da District Tax Department, Long Bien District Tax Department, Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department) according to instructions.

On September 17, although she checked the tax system and saw that more than 12 million VND in tax refund was clearly displayed, according to the tax officer's instructions, she still had to prepare the attached documents when submitting the online tax refund declaration to the Thanh Xuan District Tax Department, including: tax deduction documents, citizen identification and tax code of the taxpayer's spouse, birth certificates of children (dependents), and a declaration confirming residence in Thanh Xuan District.

“The problem is that in April, we submitted a residence confirmation form to the tax office to register dependents for our two children. At that time, we had to wait a week, and were only given one copy. It was not easy to get this confirmation, because the ward police also had to propose to the district police to sign the confirmation.

I brought out my red book to prove that my house is in Thanh Xuan, luckily it was accepted, no need to submit the residence confirmation form anymore", Ms. QP said.

On September 18, the tax refund application was received by the tax authority.

On September 20, Ms. QP received a notice of acceptance of her tax refund request; on September 24, she received a tax refund decision with a total amount of 12.9 million VND.

On September 27, the tax refund was transferred to the taxpayer's account.

Thus, despite the enthusiastic support of the Thanh Xuan District Tax Department, QP and her husband had to wait another 22 days to receive their tax refund. The total time for tax refund procedures was nearly 5 months.

Proposal to implement automatic electronic tax refund

With the current process, people spend a lot of time and effort to complete tax refund procedures; tax officers also suffer when having to sit and review piles of tax refund documents. During peak periods like April and May, many tax officers have to review thousands of tax refund documents per week.

According to experts, the tax sector needs to accelerate the digital transformation process, connect data within the tax sector as well as with relevant ministries and sectors, creating more convenience for taxpayers.

For example, when the tax industry's database is connected to the national population database or the VneID application and is effectively exploited, taxpayers will not waste time requesting a residence confirmation declaration to submit to the tax authority.

If tax authorities connect data, taxpayers will no longer have to submit two identical sets of documents when registering dependents and when completing tax refund procedures, just because each set of documents is submitted to a different department.

In particular, the tax management system currently has sufficient data information that tax payers have declared, as well as the amount of money refunded by taxpayers. The tax sector needs to soon implement automatic electronic tax refunds, without requiring taxpayers to bother declaring, requesting confirmation, submitting tax deduction invoices, etc.

The tax authority only needs to send a notification (via eTax Mobile/email/text message) about the amount of tax refunded, ask the taxpayer to confirm the account number to receive the money, and then automatically transfer this money to the account number confirmed by the taxpayer.

At that time, there will no longer be the arduous journey to receive personal income tax refunds like the story of Ms. QP mentioned above.