(Photo/Xinhua)

A tourist from Italy bought clothes in the Florentia Village in Tianjin and on the morning of June 17, he smoothly went through customs and got a departure tax refund in the Beijing Capital International Airport. This was the first case of a trans-provincial departure tax refund in China.

On the morning of June 17, a launch ceremony for the Beijing-Tianjin Departure Tax Refund Connect was held in the Beijing Capital International Airport. Beijing and Tianjin took the lead in realizing the inter-provincial departure tax refund connection. Since June 17, overseas tourists with purchases can freely choose the departure port in the Beijing-Tianjin area and enjoy the tax refund.

Since June 1, 2015, Beijing joined the first batch of Chinese cities that will implement the departure tax refund policy to overseas tourists. Foreigners and tourists from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan who do not continuously stay in Beijing for over 183 days can enjoy the departure tax refund policy and the tax refund rate is 11 percent. And on January 1 of this year, Tianjin began to implement the policy too.

In order to provide more convenience to overseas tourists and to simulate consumption, the tax bureaus of Beijing and Tianjin worked closely to connect their tax refund information systems since the latter half of 2015 and now the two cities are the first in China to realize the departure tax refund connection.