The General Department of Customs (GDC) is working on a draft circular to revise Circular 72 of 2014 regarding value-added tax (VAT) refund for goods brought along by foreigners and overseas Vietnamese upon exit, with a view to boosting tourism.
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| Carrying out VAT refund procedures at the customs desk in Da Nang international airport__Photo: Internet |
Accordingly, customs offices would take charge of building, managing, operating and using the VAT refund management system for foreigners. Meanwhile, agencies, organizations and individuals would have to provide and exchange information relating to VAT refund to customs offices via the system.
Subjects eligible for accessing and exchanging information via the system include customs offices, customs officers; enterprises registering to sell goods liable to VAT refund; the GDC; State Treasury offices, commercial banks being VAT-refund agents for foreigners; and other organizations and individuals prescribed by the GDC. These subjects would be granted accounts to access the system but must ensure state secrets and information confidentiality as prescribed by law. When changing, adding or annulling registration information, they would have to instantly notify such to customs offices.
The draft also specifies responsibilities of enterprises, tax agencies and customs offices when implementing regulations on VAT refund for foreigners and overseas Vietnamese.
Accordingly, enterprises selling goods liable to VAT refund would have to update sufficient and accurate information as stated in invoices and tax refund forms into the system. Besides, they would be obliged to report to tax agencies and customs offices if they change their names, tax identification numbers or business locations. Tax agencies would be in charge of managing enterprises selling VAT refund-liable goods and uploading the list of such enterprises on their websites. Meanwhile, customs offices would have to report to the Ministry of Finance (MOF) their decisions on VAT refund for foreigners at airports and international seaports. They would also be accountable for receiving dossiers of provincial-level People’s Committees and submitting them to the MOF for selection of airports and international seaports to apply VAT refund.- (VLLF)
