回复：谦虚请教进出口业务问题

I guess this is related to payment term. Company needs to tax to Tax Burea when they issue VAT invoice. It may be worried about not getting paid quick enough so they ended up with putting money in for long time. (It happened to me before we paid import/export tax but we did not get payment from end buyer in China. I end up with losing money for deal PLUS tax to Chinese goverment).

US companies never quote price including tax but China is somehow different. Everytime I quoted price there I always make it clear what kind of invoice will be issued. There is a trend to migrate to all VAT tax system now.

The non-VAT tax system has been applicable to smaller companies. These company would always make profit=0. In other words it is hard to collect tax. The goverment uses a flat rate (4-6%) for all invoices. Only small company with revenuw < 100 wan in china can use non-VAT tax system.