ITBIS Refunds for Dominican Exporters: How to Recover VAT Credits Under Regulation 12-2022

Every month, Dominican exporters accumulate ITBIS, the country’s 18% VAT, on their local purchases while their export sales generate none to offset it. Left unmanaged, that credit balance becomes working capital trapped inside a tax return. Regulation 12-2022, issued by the tax authority (DGII) in October 2022, is the mechanism for getting it back.

The regulation lets exporters whose ITBIS returns reflect a credit balance from their productive process request reimbursement or compensation, provided they satisfy five requirements: an updated taxpayer registry (RNC); registration certifications from ADOEXPO and ProDominicana; the customs declaration (DUA) sealed by the Customs Administration verifying the exported amount, when the DGII requires it; the filing of forms 607 (including export invoices with fiscal receipt numbers) and 606 (reflecting the input ITBIS); and being current on tax payments. The DGII may request additional information through its physical, electronic or virtual office (OFV) channels.

The regulation’s most valuable feature is its silence rule. The DGII has 30 days to respond to a reimbursement or compensation request; if it does not, its silence has the same effect as an authorization. In a system where refund requests historically aged without resolution, a positive-silence deadline shifts leverage toward the exporter, but only for files that were complete and correct when submitted, which is where most requests fail.

A second mechanism attacks the problem at its source. The DGII may authorize local suppliers of raw materials, packing materials and inputs to invoice qualifying exporters without ITBIS at all, available to exporters that have exported their entire production uninterruptedly during the prior 12 months, either through pro-forma invoices filed with the DGII or via an authorization of up to one year for recurring suppliers. For a full exporter, zero-ITBIS purchasing eliminates the credit buildup rather than recovering it after the fact.

The practical error we see most often: exporters treat the refund request as a formality and discover that inconsistencies between their 606/607 filings and their customs records, even minor ones, convert a 30-day process into a verification audit. Reconciling those datasets before filing is the single highest-return preparation step.

Our tax team prepares and follows ITBIS refund and compensation requests, structures zero-ITBIS supplier authorizations, and represents exporters before the DGII. If your company is carrying an ITBIS credit balance, contact us to turn it back into cash flow.

Do you want more information about our services for obtaining ITBIS Refunds for Dominican Exporters? Contact Us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Maria Arthur Rodger is a Partner leading the Private Client, Successions and Tax areas at Arthur & Castillo Advisers and Consultants in the Dominican Republic. She specializes in private client, successions, tax, real estate valuation and advisory (Master in Tax and Finance Studies from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. & Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona) with more than 20 years of experience. She is also a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Certified Valuator, Business Bankruptcy Expert and English and Spanish Interpreter.

Email: marthur@aclaw.com

Disclaimer: This publication is not intended to provide advice or suggest a guaranteed outcome as individual situations will differ and the situation may have changed since publication. For specific advice on the information provided and related topics, please contact the author.

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