Challenges of Refund in the VAT System

Tax refund is one of the most critical areas in the implementation of the VAT Act. There is typically variance between the taxpayer’s claimed credits and the tax auditor’s assessment leading to tension between the two parties, and if it isn’t managed properly, it will weaken the operation of VAT system and will provide the examination prorogation, inequity and distrust in the law and the law enforcement. On the other hand, taxpayers may embezzle large quantities of revenue from government’s revenues through forgery, book washing and understatement and thus, make an imbalance in the government funding calculations. Therefore, since the introduction of VAT Act and its implementation is new, a practicable solution need to be  devised. In this line through interviews with collegiate and professional experts, the main factors and problems involved in such challenges are relatively extracted where a lavshe test, and a Cronbach’s alpha test were used to confirm the validity and reliability of research instruments. The questionnaires were distributed among experts and taxpayers of Tehran and Qom provinces and upon gathering the data, by using SPSS software, certain descriptional and inferential tests were administered at the level of each component in question. The results indicate that based on tax experts’ opinions, there are 3 main challanges namely, “lack of suitable IT infrastructure”, “lack of tendency in tax officials for making tax refund” and “lack of stong law enforcement sanctions” respectively. From the taxpayers’ point of view, there are 3 challenges ahead of tax refund, namely “lack of sufficient tax and accounting knowledge”, lack of suitable IT infrastructure, “lack of tendency in tax officials for making tax refund”. Furthermore, there is no significant diference between tax experts’ and taxpayers’ opinions regarding the tax refund challanges.