After working in Ho Chi Minh City for a while, Mr. Nguyen Binh returned to Quang Binh to live. Mr. Binh has a personal income tax refund but does not know when he will be able to complete the procedures to receive the money.

The tax authority informed him that if he wanted to get his tax refund, he would have to go to Ho Chi Minh City. Mr. Binh is one of many cases where he feels that the tax refund procedure is too cumbersome, creating a burden for both taxpayers and tax officials; and still bears the mark of the ask-and-give mechanism.

Many people have the same question: Is it fair that people who pay taxes late are fined, but tax refunds are given indefinitely?

After several months of not being able to complete the procedures to receive a tax refund, Mr. Cong Tam ( Hanoi ) was advised by his friends to hire a service. Searching on the Internet, Mr. Tam found many addresses providing support services for personal income tax refund procedures. Some places offer a price of 700-800 thousand VND to complete the electronic personal income tax refund dossier within 5 minutes, and the time for the money to reach the taxpayer is flexible, ranging from 6-40 days.

Some units quote a full package price for VAT refund services for businesses, including VAT refund application fee of 8-10 million VND/application, plus VAT refund service fee of about 3-12% of the total refund amount.

“With a tax refund of about 10 million VND, I am considering finding a service provider, but I am also afraid of losing more money because these days, the truth is mixed with lies, and there are all kinds of scams,” Mr. Tam wondered.

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Automatic tax refunds bring great benefits to both taxpayers and tax officials. Photo: Nam Khanh

Automatic tax refunds are beneficial to both taxpayers and tax officials, so why not do it?

In recent years, the Tax sector has always affirmed the motto of "taking taxpayers as the center of service", making efforts to develop technology applications to serve tax declaration and payment, ensuring the most favorable conditions for people and businesses.

A series of modern technology systems have been invested in and operated by the tax sector, such as the eTax Mobile electronic tax system; big data analysis applications and artificial intelligence (AI) for tax management; databases for the implementation of taxpayer support programs...

However, automatic tax refunds have not been applied yet. Taxpayers still spend a lot of time, effort, and even give up in the journey to claim personal income tax refunds.

After nearly 5 months of receiving the personal income tax refund, Ms. Pham Quyen (Hanoi) wondered: The tax management system can display full data information that the income paying units have paid taxes to me as well as the amount of tax refund. Why not deploy automatic electronic tax refunds to save effort and time doing many procedures that I think are unnecessary such as applying for a tax refund, submitting tax deduction invoices...

"The tax department only needs to send a notification (via eTax Mobile/email/text message) about the amount of tax refunded, ask me to confirm the account number to receive the money as well as related information, and then automatically transfer this money to the account number that I confirmed. This will help both taxpayers and tax officers," Ms. Pham Quyen suggested.

According to Associate Professor, Dr. Dinh Trong Thinh, Vietnam Financial Consulting Association, in many countries around the world , the calculation of tax refund offsets has been conducted automatically, very publicly, transparently and clearly.

“Automatic tax refunds benefit both taxpayers and tax officials. However, in Vietnam, in addition to some issues related to legal policies and mechanisms, the tax database is still incomplete, while tax exemption and refund policies change continuously, so there are still many difficulties in designing an automatic tax refund mechanism,” Mr. Thinh commented.

Associate Professor, Dr. Le Xuan Truong, Head of the Department of Taxation and Customs (Academy of Finance) shared a story of "looking at others and thinking about ourselves".

“A few days ago, I left Incheon Airport in Korea. The tax refund amount was not much, but I still tried it. I just had to put my passport with chip in for the machine to read the chip, the machine would automatically release the money, allowing me to choose the currency of my choice such as VND, USD, won, without having to submit an invoice or do any declaration procedures.

I hope Vietnam will also be able to implement automatic tax refunds like that. Of course, to do that, we will have to continue to invest more," Mr. Truong said.

Speaking with VietNamNet Newspaper, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Ha - Director of the Department of Propaganda and Taxpayer Support (General Department of Taxation) said that the Tax sector is researching an automatic tax refund system, which will be deployed soon in the near future.