In October last year, China clarified the continuation of preferential policies for the full refund of value-added tax on purchases of domestically produced equipment by R&D institutions, and relaxed the threshold for tax rebates. The reporter recently learned from the National Taxation Bureau of Nanjing City that there are about 126 institutions that meet the tax rebate conditions in Nanjing, and they will receive nearly RMB 100 million in tax rebates this year. However, most organizations have not come to “acquire money” yet. The State Taxation Bureau reminded related agencies that the deadline for handling refunds from January to October 2011 was April 30 this year, but it had not been handled.

In 2009, the state introduced preferential tax policies and refunded value-added tax on purchases of domestically-manufactured equipment by domestic and foreign-invested R&D institutions. This policy was implemented for one and a half years, but on December 31, 2010, the policy expired and the tax refund was suspended. In October of last year, the country explicitly extended this tax policy and implemented it from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2015. The policy has also relaxed the “threshold” appropriately. Previously, R&D institutions must obtain special VAT invoices to obtain tax refunds. However, most colleges and universities only purchase VAT invoices when they purchase teaching and research instruments. The new policy clearly stipulates that this part of the VAT ordinary invoices obtained by previous R&D institutions can also be declared tax refund before April 30th, 2012.

“There are many research institutes, colleges and universities and R&D institutions in Nanjing. According to our preliminary investigation, there are approximately 126 qualified institutions in Nanjing, and nearly RMB 100 million in tax rebates will be available in this year.” Nanjing Taxation Bureau Liu Jun, director of the Import and Export Tax Administration Division, said that the number of universities is the largest, about 60; and there are also many national key laboratories, about 18.