In 2019, the STA continuously accelerated export refund processing and steadily expanded the scope of paperless tax refund declarations. It improved the convenience of departure tax refunds, promoted the function of applying export tax refund in a "single service window", continuously strengthened the sharing of tax refund information and enhanced the coordination between tax collection and tax refund. These measures ensured a timely and accurate export refund for enterprises and relieve their cash flow burden, supporting a sustained, stable and healthy development of foreign trade. Tax authorities across the country have processed a total of 1574.02 billion RMB in export refunded (exempted) taxes with a year-on-year increase of 4.8%.

Accelerating Export Refund Processing

In order to implement the State Council's decision on accelerating export refund processing, the STA introduced paperless refund filing in all regions and all rating Class A and Class B enterprises. It also accelerated the export refund processing, and the average time for tax authorities across the country to process the regular tax refunds has been kept within 10 working days.
Expanding the Scope of Paperless Refund Filings

The expansion of the scope of paperless refund filing was listed as one of the new measures to offer convenient tax services to taxpayers. Paperless filing was encouraged to be used not only by rating Class A and Class B enterprises, but also in rating Class C enterprises on a voluntary basis, so as to continuously improve the convenience of tax refunds.

Supporting the Development of New Trade Models

In order to further support and serve the development of the private economy, the STA guided tax authorities in the pilot areas for comprehensive management of market procurement and trade to cooperate with commerce, customs and other departments to develop an integrated market procurement and trade management system and a tax exemption management system. In 2019, relevant market tax exemption management systems were inspected and accepted in accordance with the provisions of the Administrative Measures for Export Exemption of Market Procurement (Provisional).

Improving Convenience Level of Departure Tax Refunding

The STA actively innovated tax refund services. From January 30, 2019, an instant departure tax refund service was introduced in Shanghai on a trial basis, which has greatly accelerated export refund processing and promoted the shopping and consumption of overseas tourists in China. From September 21, 2019, tax refund through WeChat and Alipay was piloted in Beijing to provide more choices for foreign tourists.

Cooperating in Promoting the Function of Export Refund Filing via "Single Window"

In order to further improve trade facilitation, the STA actively cooperated with the National Office of Port Administration to jointly develop and construct a standardized "single service window" export refund filing function, providing export enterprises with new refund filing channel. The function was piloted in Beijing and Zhejiang in September, 2019 and gradually launched in other regions.

Enhancing the Coordination between Collection and Refunding for Export Enterprises

Information of the tax collection and refund of export enterprises was better shared, realizing big-data-based risk analysis of export businesses from export refund and exemption recording, taxpayer registry, to tax refund (exemption) filing, tax filing, export refund (exemption) approval and VAT collection, as well as collaborated prevention and crack-down on the export tax refund fraud with auditing departments, which helped coordinate works and prevent tax risks.