During the 2026 Chinese New Year holiday (February 15-23), customs authorities across Guangdong Province verified 7,380 departure tax refund applications, 17 times the figure recorded during the same period last year. The total value of refunded goods reached 38.58 million yuan, 1.5 times that of the previous year.
To facilitate smoother tax refund services, customs authorities began trial operations for departure tax refunds at Pazhou Ferry Terminal in Guangzhou on the first day of the holiday. Currently, both Guangzhou and Shenzhen have established comprehensive departure tax refund systems covering airports, as well as land and waterway ports.
During the holiday, three ports in Guangzhou processed 5,094 tax refund applications involving 12.41 million yuan, up 51 times and three times year-on-year, respectively. In Shenzhen, six ports handled 2,249 applications totaling 25.88 million yuan, representing increases of seven times and 1.2 times.
In response to peak passenger flows, customs authorities worked closely with airports, port operators, border control authorities, and tax refund agencies to enhance on-site guidance, improve bilingual signage, add multilingual service counters, and introduce smart translation devices.
Customs has also promoted an "one form, one package, one code" intelligent supervision model. Leveraging AI large-model technology, it developed a dedicated tax refund module capable of intelligent data extraction and automatic entry, reducing verification time per application to just five minutes.
Tax refund guides:
One-Stop Tax Refund: How to claim purchases from 600+ Guangzhou stores in minutes | INFO Guangdong
How to get your instant in-store tax refunds while shopping in Guangzhou? | GDToday
Reporter | Dai Bosi
Photo | Guangdong Sub-Administration of GACC
