GST Council offers relief on late filing of tax returns
Posted on: 01/Jul/2020 3:34:42 PM
In 40th GST council meet Our Honorable finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been given a very good and long awaiting opportunity to the business people/GST filers. Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman said the late fee for filing monthly return of transactions has been waived off or lowered to clean up the pend-ency in return filing.
NEW DELHI: Federal indirect tax body, the Goods and Services Tax(GST) Council, on Friday offered relief to business on late filing of the monthly return to boost tax compliance.
Since monthly GST returns can only be filed sequentially, missing one month meant that return for the next month cannot be filed unless the missing month’s return is filed with a late fee, something many small businesses could not afford due to find crunch.
Finance minister Nirmala Seetharaman on 12th June, after a four-hour videoconference with state ministers, told reporter that late fee for filing monthly return of transaction (form 3B) has been waived off or lowered to “clean up the pendency in return filing.
Accordingly, businesses that have no tax liability but have defaulted on filing returns for the period of July 2017 to January 2020 can file these returns between July to September without any late fee. In case of defaulters who have a tax liability to meet for the period, the late fee has been capped at ₹500 a month per return, Finance minister explained.
This is a big relief to businesses as late fee charges could go to ₹10.000 a month under the earlier norms. “This reduced rate of the late fee would apply to GSTR 3Bs getting furnished between 1 July 2020 to 30 September 2020 This is to help clear pendency” Finance Minister said.
The Council also decided to halve the interest rate on the tax liability to 9% in the case of small taxpayers with sales up to ₹5 crores for late filing of return beyond the specified dates for the three months starting February. The window for filing late returns for these three months will now stay open till 30 September.
