The whole company spent several months verifying the invoice.

The tax industry stipulates that businesses must prove that the origin of input invoices and documents is valid in order to receive a tax refund.

"There are cases where people bought goods several years ago, but now they have not been able to find the owner of the establishment who issued the invoice or documents. There are also cases where people do not want to sign the confirmation because they are afraid of revealing their income and having to pay more taxes. In many cases, they have to go back and forth 3-4 times before they agree to sign the confirmation of the invoice or documents.

Unable to trace the origin of invoices and legal documents of sales transactions, the tax refund was temporarily "suspended". Last year, the company spent several months focusing only on verifying invoices and documents to get a tax refund", a representative of a wood business in Thanh Hoa told VietNamNet reporter.

Compared to many other localities, the tax refund amount of wood enterprises in Thanh Hoa is not large, last year only about a few tens of billion VND.

“Although it takes time to trace the origin of invoices and documents, basically all wood enterprises in Thanh Hoa have had their tax refunds resolved. The most difficult situation now is probably the wood enterprises in Quang Ninh, the total amount of unresolved tax refunds has accumulated to thousands of billions of VND,” said a business representative.

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According to tax regulations, wood businesses must prove that the origin of invoices and input documents are valid in order to receive a tax refund. Photo: Vietfores.

The director of a plywood company that completed tax refund procedures in 2023 said that the plywood industry often buys directly from factories, so it is easy to verify the origin of invoices and documents. Meanwhile, the wood chip industry faces more difficulties because it purchases from households, with many related lists and data.

"There are more than 1 million forest planting households in the country. Tracing the origin of invoices and documents takes a lot of resources from both businesses and tax officials. There are cases where forest owners have passed away and have not completed the procedures to divide the inheritance to their children. Now we have to verify the identity and household registration of the heirs, which takes a lot of time," said the director.

If it only takes about 2-3 months to complete the tax refund, the capital turnover time is fast. But the time to verify invoices and documents lasts up to 6-9 months, even annually, with a tax rate of 8-10%, total sales of about 1,000 billion VND, the tax refund amount is up to hundreds of billions of VND, if it is delayed, it will significantly affect the production and business activities of the enterprise.

"One bad apple spoils the barrel"

According to the leader of the Vietnam Timber and Forest Products Association, many years ago, the management of invoices and documents was not good, the buying and selling of invoices was rampant, many wood enterprises evaded taxes, took advantage of taxes at a serious level, and fell into legal trouble, so the wood industry was classified by the tax department as "high risk", requiring strict control of invoices and documents.

So it happened that honest business people were "collaterally affected" by illegal business people.

In the middle of last year, many wood businesses were left without capital and were pushed to the brink of collapse, having to send a cry for help to the Prime Minister because the process of verifying invoices and documents took too long, and thousands of billions of dong in tax refunds were not resolved.

The Vietnam Timber and Forest Products Association has worked with the Ministry of Finance and the General Department of Taxation many times to find ways to remove difficulties for businesses. The tax sector has taken action to screen businesses to resolve tax refunds first, and the situation has gradually improved.

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Wood businesses have become more aware of the importance of correcting input invoices and documents from the beginning. Photo: Vietfores

For about a year now, wood businesses have become more aware of the importance of having to standardize all types of invoices and input documents right from the start. Especially when Vietnamese wood import markets have put forth a series of requirements that must be met regarding traceability, forest plantation certificates, etc.

However, for businesses that have not been able to trace the origin of valid invoices and input documents from several years ago, the story of tax refund settlement has not yet ended. Hundreds of billions, thousands of billions of VND are still temporarily "suspended" while businesses are in dire need of money to develop production and business.

Many wood businesses hope that, instead of exacerbating the problem of invoice fraud and pushing the responsibility onto the businesses, it would be much better if the tax industry had a classification solution so that businesses that do business honestly would not have to suffer.