With the current process, people spend a lot of time and effort to complete tax refund procedures, while tax officials also suffer when having to review stacks of tax refund documents.

The General Department of Taxation ( Ministry of Finance ) announced that it is researching and will soon implement several products and tools to serve tax management, including an application for automated personal income tax refunds.

Speaking at the launching ceremony of the virtual assistant product to support taxpayers at the Hanoi Tax Department this morning (November 21), Director General of the General Department of Taxation Mai Xuan Thanh said that the General Department of Taxation is building the "Suggested Personal Income Tax Finalization Declaration" function on applications to support individuals in electronic tax declaration.

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Automatic personal income tax refund from the beginning of 2025. Photo: Nam Khanh

This application will assist in generating suggested tax returns for individuals based on a comprehensive tax system database compiled from income-paying organizations, instead of taxpayers having to manually compile the information for declaration. Subsequently, the tax authorities will upgrade the application to automatically support the entire process of tax settlement and personal income tax refund for taxpayers.

This is expected to be implemented in early 2025 (before the 2024 personal income tax settlement period).

The Director General of the General Department of Taxation assessed that automatic personal income tax refunds will shorten and simplify the steps for processing personal income tax refund dossiers and reduce the amount of manual processing.

"With the very large number of individual taxpayers that the tax authorities manage annually and have to carry out administrative procedures such as tax settlement and personal income tax refunds, the deployment of the application will be a breakthrough to simplify administrative procedures, support taxpayers in easily settling their taxes, and at the same time reduce the workload for the tax authorities," Mr. Thanh said.

The General Department of Taxation also informed that the tax sector is building an electronic information portal for individuals with e-commerce business activities to register, declare and pay taxes. The General Department of Taxation has basically completed the functions of the portal and will soon be launched to taxpayers.

Mr. Thanh also mentioned a number of other products and tools serving tax management such as using artificial intelligence (AI) in analyzing electronic invoice information to identify unusual sales and business values; applying AI in analyzing big data collected from e-commerce business activities to identify acts of non-declaration, tax payment, and tax evasion; applying AI in checking tax declaration records...

Tax refund is still difficult, tax department is given new power

Tax refund is still difficult, tax department is given new power

According to the Ministry of Finance, implementing tax refunds as currently regulated means that the process, procedures, and coordination between the tax department and the tax branch in handling refunds can take a long time.
What about penalties for late tax payments and delays in tax refunds for citizens?

What about penalties for late tax payments and delays in tax refunds for citizens?

Many VietNamNet readers have expressed their desire for the General Department of Taxation to listen to the legitimate needs of taxpayers and soon implement an automatic tax refund feature as simple as a bank transfer.
Automatic tax refunds reduce hassle for both citizens and tax officials: Why not implement them?

Automatic tax refunds reduce hassle for both citizens and tax officials: Why not implement them?

The amount is clearly displayed on the tax management system, but taxpayers still have to apply for a tax refund with many procedures to receive the money. Many people hope to have automatic tax refunds soon to reduce the hassle.