Is the export tax refund slow? You might have stepped on these three minefields

Mr. Zhang stared at the declaration form on the computer screen, his fingers hovering over the Enter key, reluctant to press it - this was already the third time he had revised the tax refund materials this month. For financial personnel of foreign trade enterprises like him, the delay in the arrival of tax refunds or even losses caused by operational errors each year could be as high as hundreds of thousands of yuan. Export tax refund is not a multiple-choice question, but a compulsory one, but getting one question wrong could put the enterprise's cash flow in a passive position.

Ms. Li's lesson is quite typical: Last year, due to a one-digit error in filling out the commodity code on the customs declaration form, the 32,000 yuan tax refund was delayed for a full four months. Through more than 200 enterprise cases served by Zhongshitong, we found that high-frequency mistakes are concentrated in:

• Document Time Difference: The date of the customs declaration form is earlier than the date when the purchase invoice was issued.
• Amount Magic: The international freight was omitted when calculating the FOB price.
• Code Illusion: The HS code that one thought was correct did not match that recognized by the tax bureau.

A cross-border e-commerce company has compressed the average tax refund cycle from 87 days to 23 days by using this method:

• Week 1: Establish a three-line tracking table for the export date, the foreign exchange collection date, and the declaration date.
• Week 2: Use the code query tool on the official website of the tax bureau for secondary verification.
• Week 3: Create a "Three-Document Comparison Template" for invoices, bills of lading, and customs declaration forms.
• Week 4: Conduct a simulated submission test in the tax refund declaration system.

Now some enterprises have already used RPA robots to automatically capture the data of electronic ledgers, which is 20 times more efficient than manual verification. However, no matter how advanced the technology is, it should be noted that: The new regulations in 2023 require that cross-border e-commerce retail exports must upload screenshots of platform transactions, and enterprises in the traditional B2B model are prone to overlook this point.

When the accountant of the neighboring company is sipping coffee while waiting for the tax refund to arrive, are you still running around the tax bureau to supplement materials? You might as well share your most headache-inducing tax refund problems in the comment section, and we will select three typical cases for in-depth analysis. After all, tax refund is not a solo dance of the finance department, but a symphony of the whole enterprise.