IVA Refund Procedures

One of the benefits of living in Ecuador if you're 65 or older is that you can apply to receive your IVA refunded back to you.  The IVA is a national sales tax of 12%.  You need to always get a Factura (receipt) from the merchant that sold you the goods (restaurants; stores such as grocery, furniture, office supply; utilities such as cell phones, cable TV, etc.).  We submit our Facturas from the restaurants we frequent, Supermaxi grocery store, Juan Marcet office supply store, Claro, DirecTV, Sukasa home store, gas stations, etc.

In the past, you had to go in person to submit your Facturas.  But now, you can now submit your Factura information online to receive your refund.

Here are the steps:

After you have your Cedula, and after you have a bank account, then go to SRI to register in person.  They should give you a computer-generated clave (password).  Your user ID will be your Cedula number and upon initial sign-in, you will need to change the computer-generated clave to one that you create.

Your Facturas must show the RUC number of the vendor, the date, your name, and your Cedula number, plus an IVA (tax) amount paid on the transaction.

Start at www.sri.gob.ec

Mouse on “Servicios en linea”, and drop-downs “Servicios en linea” and click on “Devoluciones”.

Fill in your Cedula number in the box “No. ID Titular”  

The “Contrasena” (password) should already be filled in from your prior registration.  Click on “aceptar”

On the upcoming page, click on “General” on the left side, then click on “Devoluciones”

Then click on “Devolucion Tercera Edad” then the drop down “Cargar Informacion”

Fill in your Cedula number again in the box for “CI/RUC Titular”

The “Contrasena” (password) should already be filled in from your prior registration.  Click on “aceptar”

On the upcoming page click the drop-down to select your town from “SELECCIONE LA CIUDAD DE RESIDENCIA”

Once the correct town shows up, click on the blue “Plantilla SolicitudDTE.xls” under section 2.  

This will bring up the Excel spreadsheet on which you make your claim.

Organize your Facturas by year, then month, then vendor (you may have more than one Factura per month for a certain vendor, and these need to be totaled).  Your spreadsheet must contain only one month at a time for submission.

On this form there are six columns:

• RUC PROVEEDOR – Fill in the 13-digit RUC number from each vendor on your Facturas.

• CANTIDAD DE COMPROBANTES –  Fill in the number of receipts for that particular vendor for that month

• IMPUESTO – click on the drop-down arrow and choose “IVA”

• VALOR TOTAL DEL IMPUESTO – Fill in the TOTAL of the IVA amounts for that particular vendor for that month

• ANO – Fill in the year (e.g. 2015)

• MES – Fill in the month (e.g. 1 (for January))

FACTURAS can be claimed for several months, any time AFTER the month of purchase.

“SAVE AS” (under the file menu at the top left) to a file of your choosing on your computer.  You need to be able to easily find this saved file to attach to your SRI submission.  Once it is saved, close the form.

You are then back to that same page and you click on “Choose File”, then find the form you just completed in the file where you just saved it.

You are still on the same page, so click on the button “CARGAR ARCHIVO” which sends the file to SRI.

Click on “CONFIRMA CARGAR ARCHIVO” to confirm sending the file.

You should get the message “CARGAR DE ARCHIVO REALIZADA EXITOSAMENT” which means that SRI has received the file.

Click “ACCEPTAR” and we recommend that you “Print Screen” to save the summary and “paste” it to a Word document for safekeeping as proof of submission.

Then “Cerrar Sesion” and you are done!.  Check your bank account regularly. It can take up to 90 days for the refund to appear there.

I've done this once so far and the refund was deposited into our Pichincha savings account within ten days.

Good luck!