General Department of Taxation requests immediate VAT refund for completed inspection records

The Director General of the General Department of Taxation has just sent a telegram to the heads of tax departments of provinces and centrally run cities to direct the acceleration of handling value-added tax (VAT) refund dossiers.

The telegram contains many contents aimed at removing the bottleneck on VAT refunds that has existed for the past two years.

According to the General Department of Taxation, nearly 80% of VAT refund requests have been classified by the tax sector as pre-refund, post-inspection and resolved quickly within 6 working days, contributing to creating favorable conditions for businesses to develop production, business and export goods.

The General Department of Taxation requests immediate VAT refund for completed files (Photo: Hoang Ha)

However, there are still delays in some localities in checking and verifying VAT refund applications of export enterprises.

Therefore, the General Director of the General Department of Taxation requests that VAT refund applications that the tax authority has completed the inspection and determined to be eligible for refund must be processed immediately.

This agency also proposed a solution to the situation of tax refund applications that are past the processing deadline.

Accordingly, the tax department reviews the classification of VAT refund application files to ensure compliance with regulations. The Director directly and assigns deputy directors to review each tax refund application file, especially files that have been classified for pre-inspection and post-refund to speed up the inspection and verification of tax refund conditions.

Notably, for VAT refund application dossiers that the tax authority has completed the inspection and determined to be eligible for refund, the refund will be processed immediately.

For tax refund applications of exporting enterprises that are being inspected and verified but have exceeded the prescribed settlement period, if the inspection and verification results up to now have not detected any tax fraud, the tax authority shall base on the application and accompanying documents provided by the enterprise to determine the tax amount eligible for tax refund and handle the tax refund according to regulations.

The General Department of Taxation also directed: In case after handling tax refund, the tax authority discovers that the enterprise has made an incorrect declaration of the tax amount requested for refund, the enterprise must pay back the excess refunded tax amount and late payment fee according to regulations, and at the same time the enterprise is fully responsible before the law for its violation.

For tax authorities that detect fraudulent acts and signs aimed at taking advantage of tax refunds from the State budget, they will consolidate the records to transfer to the police for investigation, and at the same time notify the enterprise in writing and base on the conclusions of the competent authorities to handle according to regulations.

VAT refunds have been a matter of concern for businesses for a long time. Many businesses have had their VAT refunds delayed, amounting to thousands of billions of VND, causing financial difficulties, especially in the context of a lack of orders and exhausted cash flow. Many businesses have had their VAT refunds delayed, amounting to hundreds of billions of VND.

According to preliminary statistics from the Vietnam Timber and Forest Products Association, it is estimated that the amount of VAT refunds that wood industry businesses have delayed is up to more than 6,000 billion VND, the actual figure may be much larger.

This has caused huge losses to businesses. Many businesses and associations have called for help from the General Department of Taxation, the Ministry of Finance , the Government and the National Assembly.

Minister of Finance: Resolutely not refunding tax for files with signs of fraud . The Tax sector needs to focus on handling tax refund files to ensure transparency, resolutely not refunding tax for files that do not meet the conditions, files with signs of fraud need to be transferred to the police agency for coordination in handling.

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