CCTV News: On April 27, the State Information Office held a press conference to introduce the situation of optimizing the departure tax refund policy and expanding inbound consumption.
Xie Wenhui, Director of the Goods and Labor Taxation Department of the State Administration of Taxation, said at a meeting that the State Administration of Taxation has taken multiple measures in recent years to promote the implementation of the tax refund policy for overseas travelers shopping, continuously improve the convenience of tax refunds, and attract overseas personnel to come to China for consumption.
In terms of improving the intelligence level of tax refund, we will build an outbound tax refund management information system involving tax refund stores, agencies, customs and taxation links, realize electronic information transmission, verification and other functions, and improve tax refund efficiency.
In terms of precise policy publicity, we design a dynamic map of departure tax refund shops for overseas tourists to inquire, and write a "Departure Tax Refund Processing Guide" in ten languages including English, German, French, Japanese, and Korean; produce promotional products such as promotional videos and short videos, and place them in places where overseas tourists are concentrated, such as urban business districts, cultural and tourism venues, and entry ports, to improve the accuracy and coverage of policy publicity.
In terms of optimizing the consumption payment environment, we actively work with the People's Bank of China to promote the configuration of foreign currency cards in tax refund stores, and realize direct foreign currency card swiping consumption settlement.
In terms of innovative service measures, we have introduced the "buy and refund" service measures for departure tax refunds, actively promoted them nationwide on the basis of pilot projects in some regions, and promoted local governments to explore the establishment of centralized refund points to provide more convenient options for overseas travelers to handle tax refunds.
In 2024, the sales and tax refunds for goods handling departure tax refunds increased by 1.2 times and 1.3 times year-on-year respectively.
