We have simply carried the credit forward year after year. Can we still claim a refund later?

Carrying forward and claiming a refund are two different treatments. Which periods can be claimed,and on what conditions,follows the Revenue Department's rules as they currently stand. Whether your historical credit can be dealt with,and by which route,has to be checked period by period against your own filing record. It is not something to decide from a general rule of thumb.

The self-check found invoices that do not comply. Can they still be fixed?

It depends which kind of problem. Where a required element is missing and the supplier can reissue,it can usually be handled. Where the invoice names the wrong party,or the period is wrong,the route is different. List the problems by category and work through them one category at a time rather than all together.

How long does it take to receive the money?

It depends on your input structure,how complete your documents are,and the pace of the review. There is no general answer,and we make no commitment on timing. What can be controlled is the controllable part:the documents that should be complete are complete,the treatment that should agree agrees,and queries that should be answered are answered on time.

How is the fee calculated?

Refund work is commonly arranged on a success-fee basis. The percentage,and whether the initial self-check is included,is set case by case. Tell our advisers your export scale and the current state of your books and we will issue a quotation that states the scope.

Service · export VAT refund

Thailand export VAT refunds: recovering input tax on your books

Prepared by the CTAC Thailand advisory team · Updated 2026-08-17

In short

Exports are zero-rated, so the input VAT you pay on purchases builds up as a credit. That credit can be carried forward, or it can be claimed back — plenty of export factories carry it forward out of habit, and after a few years the amount sitting on the books is considerable. Whether you actually get it back turns on two things: whether your invoices hold up, and whether your numbers are stated consistently across the return, the books and the export documents.

01How much money is sitting there

It depends on your export share, your purchasing mix and how many periods you have carried forward. We do not give a range, because a range would only mislead your budgeting. The direction is clear enough: the higher the export share, the more you buy domestically, and the longer the credit has been carried, the larger the amount. The first step is to calculate it, not to guess at it.

Whether a company files at all usually comes down to one thing: whether anyone is willing to face the cycle of document requests. And the length of that cycle is decided almost entirely by the quality of the self-check done before filing. For background on how the credit builds up in the first place, see VAT refunds for exporters.

02When a refund stalls, it is almost always one of three things

The blockers repeat themselves:

Invoices that do not hold up. Input tax invoices missing required elements, made out to the wrong party, or booked to the wrong period. These are struck out during review.
Return, books and export documents do not reconcile. Amounts and periods differ between the VAT return, the accounts and the export paperwork, which triggers further checking.
Documents and deadlines slip. Rounds of document requests drag on, or the filing arrangement is missed.

A refund claim is not an audit. It enters a review procedure, and that is the normal course. What causes real trouble is inconsistency between the return, the books and the documents. That is exactly what the self-check is for: what the reviewer sees should be one set of figures that agrees with itself.

03What we do

Four pieces of work:

Size the refundable amount. Work out how much is sitting there and which periods can be claimed, before deciding whether to file and how.
Self-check before filing. Every invoice reviewed, the three-way reconciliation run period by period, the export evidence chain traced transaction by transaction. Anything that will not tie out is listed and sorted by type. A problem you find yourself can be dealt with calmly; a problem the reviewer finds becomes a document-request cycle.
Filing and follow-up. Assembling the file, submitting it, and answering review queries promptly and accurately. Slow replies are the most common reason a refund takes longer than it needs to.
Day-to-day input invoice practice. A refund is the result of routine discipline, not a push at filing time. We hand your team the checkpoints that matter at the moment invoices come in — the same discipline that sits behind monthly tax compliance.

One more point worth flagging: the refund route for a promoted company is not the same as for an ordinary company. Document requirements and timing arrangements differ. Check against the route that applies to you rather than forcing another company's checklist onto your case. If promoted status is part of the picture, see BOI application.

04Why work with us

Four positions we hold to on this kind of work:

Calculate first, then act. Filing without knowing the refundable amount is a gamble. We put the calculation first so you can see whether the exercise is worth your time.
Self-check before submission, not after. We would rather spend two extra weeks checking than enter a document-request cycle. The cycle costs you time, and it costs you standing with the reviewer.
No estimated amounts, no estimated payout dates. Both depend on your input structure, how complete your documents are, and the pace of the review. There is no general answer. Treat anyone promising money in the account within a set number of months with caution.
Our advisers handle it end to end, so you are not the one dealing with the filing and the queries.

05What you receive

You receive:

A sizing schedule: credits by period, the amount that can be claimed, and the basis for it.
A pre-filing self-check report: the three problem classes — invoices, reconciliation, export evidence chain — listed with recommended handling.
The complete refund application file, and its submission.
A query response log: what was asked, what was answered, and the deadlines tracked.

Common questions

We have simply carried the credit forward year after year. Can we still claim a refund later?: Carrying forward and claiming a refund are two different treatments. Which periods can be claimed, and on what conditions, follows the Revenue Department's rules as they currently stand. Whether your historical credit can be dealt with, and by which route, has to be checked period by period against your own filing record. It is not something to decide from a general rule of thumb.
The self-check found invoices that do not comply. Can they still be fixed?: It depends which kind of problem. Where a required element is missing and the supplier can reissue, it can usually be handled. Where the invoice names the wrong party, or the period is wrong, the route is different. List the problems by category and work through them one category at a time rather than all together.
How long does it take to receive the money?: It depends on your input structure, how complete your documents are, and the pace of the review. There is no general answer, and we make no commitment on timing. What can be controlled is the controllable part: the documents that should be complete are complete, the treatment that should agree agrees, and queries that should be answered are answered on time.
How is the fee calculated?: Refund work is commonly arranged on a success-fee basis. The percentage, and whether the initial self-check is included, is set case by case. Tell our advisers your export scale and the current state of your books and we will issue a quotation that states the scope.

Checked against the official texts by the CTAC Thailand advisory team. We track the gazettes of the BOI, the Revenue Department, the Department of Business Development and Thai Customs every week; when an official position changes, the affected pages are updated and dated.

This page is general information based on the rules in force at the date shown. Thai BOI categories, incentive conditions and foreign-investment rules change often. Before acting on any specific project, check the latest official announcement and have a formal opinion issued on your own facts.

Tell us your situation and our advisers will set out the next step

Quotations are issued by project scope and state what we do and what you receive. We talk it through before anything is fixed.

中文版 · Chinese version