After receiving a report from Ms. Nguyen Thi Viet Phuong in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) about being refused a refund of personal income tax in 2024 due to tax data since 2014, HCMC Tax has inspected, handled and issued a tax refund decision in accordance with regulations.
Previously, Ms. Phuong had submitted a request for personal income tax refund in 2024. However, at that time, the Tax Department of Area II (HCMC) issued a notice: "The tax refund file was not eligible. Reason: In 2014, taxpayers were subject to having to settle directly with tax authorities because they had 2 sources of income and had a tax payment but had not yet done so".
The notice stated the reason for not being refunded, but did not include detailed information such as: specifically where the two sources of income are from, what data still exists, how to handle it...
This makes it difficult for Ms. Phuong to verify information that arose more than 10 years ago, when the current search system of the tax unit does not allow tracing income data from 2014 and earlier.
Ms. Phuong had to go directly to the tax authority, and was instructed by the staff to make a commitment to only generate 1 source of income in 2014 to continue completing the documents.
Ms. Phuong asked, in this case, what should taxpayers do to be able to handle tax refunds in 2024 in accordance with regulations?
She also recommended that tax authorities need to have tools to allow people to proactively look up income and tax deduction data in previous years, avoiding cases of being refused tax refunds due to lack of information. Improving the hotline to support people because the phone number of the tax unit is currently very difficult to contact, always in a state of being unable to connect.
Regarding this issue, Ho Chi Minh City Tax has the following opinion:
After Ms. Phuong sent a document requesting the handling of the excess payment and accompanying documents, on May 9, 2025, Ho Chi Minh City Tax Department issued a decision on tax refund to Ms. Nguyen Thi Viet Phuong, with the refunded tax amount being VND 19,546,634, in accordance with the provisions of Article 60 of the Law on Tax Administration No. 38/2019/QH14, Article 25 of Circular No. 80/2021/TT-BTC and Article 28 of Circular No. 111/2013/TT-BTC.
The tax refund decision attached to the Order for refund of State budget revenue has been established and transferred to the State Treasury, the bank receiving it is the Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam.
