Developing a new tax refund process

	Answering FDI enterprises’ queries on tax refund for on-spot export
	Domestic tax collection in September falls sharply
	Regulating value-added tax refund for investment projects in exploiting natural resources and minerals

The General Department of Taxation organized a virtual conference to collect opinions on a draft on new tax refund process.

New tax refund process is a must

According to the General Department of Taxation, the prevailing tax refund process was issued according to Decision 905 of the General Department of Taxation and applied from July 1, 2011. The process has helped the tax agency monitor and manage taxpayers, ensuring that taxpayers have completed tax refund procedures and tax officers perform their duties and powers properly.

According to the General Department of Taxation, in tax refund management, the tax authorities have made many efforts and taken strict measures to manage and inspect documents before refunding tax, contributing to preventing fraud in tax refunds, especially value-added tax refunds. Many tax agencies have provided support of tax policies for businesses, so taxpayers have a high sense of compliance with the tax refund process.

After the Law on Tax Administration 38/QH14 was issued from July 1, 2020, the Ministry of Finance was assigned to detail regulations on receiving and responding to information on tax refund dossiers, classification of tax refund dossiers, authority to decide on tax refund, order and procedures. The General Department of Taxation issued Circular 80/2021 guiding the Law on Tax Administration 38/2019/QH14 effective from January 1, 2022.

To comply with the new tax management requirements, to associate the management of value-added tax refunds with the application of information technology based on the tax management database of the industry, it is necessary to develop the draft on the tax refund process to replace the process issued under Decision 905.

According to Deputy General Director of the General Department of Taxation Phi Van Tuan, to ensure the feasibility and consistency of the new process, tax agencies at all levels must give their opinions on the draft process from the content of work, order, time, method of the implementation to the task assigned to each tax officer, tax unit at all levels in receiving and handling tax refund for taxpayers.

Along with that is the maximum automation of steps to ensure control of the tax refund settlement progress, the responsibility of each individual and tax refund finalization. The process must have a connection and consistency between other related tax management processes on the basis of risk management, application of inspection and internal inspection in the tax refund control.

Steps to receive applications should be more detailed

At the conference, Director of Tax Declaration and Accounting Department (General Department of Taxation) Le Thi Duyen Hai presented the contents of the draft. Specifically, the tax refund process is composed of three parts: general provisions; the content of the process includes specific regulations on receiving, classifying and accepting refund applications; and implementation.

According to her, the draft process provides clearer and more specific instructions for receiving applications online, ensuring maximum automation of the work; and makes a list of the status of tax refund applications, error codes, assignment of application settlement to support tax refund settlement.

Along with that, the process focuses on analyzing applications; determining conditions for refund, focusing on the nature of the tax amount requested for refund and the enterprises’ production and business performance.

In addition, the process provides professional principles on the basis of information technology application in tax refund management, ensuring the correct, complete and timely recording, control, and accounting of complete information about the tax refund application, decision and refund order on the tax management system.

The draft also stipulates the circulation of documents in electronic form to meet the requirements of the government’s policy on the circulation of e-documents and promote electronic transactions with taxpayers of tax authorities at all levels.

For personal income tax refunds of self-settlement individuals, to issue a decision on tax refunds, all taxpayers' data must be matched, ensuring the accuracy of overpaid tax amount; and the personal income management unit is assigned to handle personal income tax refund applications.

As for refund applications for organizations that are enterprises, the draft stipulates the coordination between units in the tax agency in receiving, classifying and settling tax refunds to avoid duplication in processing for tax authorities and reducing procedures for taxpayers.

The draft process also removes a number of inappropriate contents, revises and adds contents of processing time, reporting regimes, and implementation and process templates.

Tax sector has made e-tax refund worth nearly VND 80 trillion VCN - The tax sector has used information technology application projects to facilitate taxpayers.

At the conference, the participants exchanged and discussed the contents of receiving and processing tax refund dossiers according to the tax law for the applicant as an enterprise, personal income tax refund application of individual’s self-settlement as well as receiving and settling refund applications of overpaid tax.