27/02/2024

The Director General of the Income and Sales Tax Department, Hussam Abu Ali, announced that the total tax refunds disbursed during the past year amounted to about 90 million dinars, it was income tax refunds for individuals amounting to about 25 million dinars, and sales tax refunds for establishments amounted to about 65 million dinars.

Abu Ali explained that accelerating the process of disbursing the refunds comes within the reform approach which the department follow, as the sales tax law was amended for this purpose, which led to pay all the refunds of the sales tax that had accumulated from previous years.

He confirmed that all sales tax refunds for the year 2022 and before which have audited it have disbursed, in addition to the refunds that were completed audited before September of last year 2023. Thus, all audited sales tax refunds until September of last year 2023 It was disbursed and transferred to taxpayers’ bank accounts. and there is no accumulated refund for the sales tax from previous years, this happened for the first time only in this year 2024.

As for income tax refunds, Abu Ali explained that as part of the reforms policy of the department, which adopted electronic auditing through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) , this led to the rapid completion of tax audit procedures for tax returns, and thus the time that takes between submitting the tax return from the taxpayer and its audit by the tax auditor was shortened. This is certainly reflected in the speed of disbursement the refunds

The Director General of Income and Sales Tax added that it is part of the department’s policy in disbursing income tax refunds, that refunds will pay to employees who submit their tax returns and declare their income accurately, so that they have priority in disbursing refunds, as priority is given to employees, and the principles followed in disbursing refunds depend on speed of submits the declaration so that the priority for disbursing the refund will be to the person who submitted his declaration first.

He stated that disbursing refunds requires from the department to ensure that the establishment or company that withheld income tax and remitted it on behalf of the taxpayer to the Income and Sales Tax Department

He added that it is worth noting that we should clarify that the disbursement of refunds is from the state’s public funds, which requires effective and efficient auditing and ensuring the validity of the taxpayers’ claims for these refunds.

He announced that effective auditing procedures, using electronic technologies, were able to control cases of requesting incorrect responses, which requires to take legal measures against violators to ensure the preservation of public money.