33,000 Notices for GST Return discrepancies in FY18, FY19; CBIC

A CBIC official said on Wednesday that central tax authorities handed over 33,000 GST notices to firms for errors in returns filed and underpayment of taxes in the 2017-18 and 2018-19 financial years.

The National Coordination Committee comprising State and Central GST officials, led by the Revenue Secretary, is expected to meet by the end of this month or early January, among other things to sensitise tax authorities on the issue of notices, according to the source.

Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) Member-GST Shashank Priya remarked at the Assocham National Conference on GST that the notifications given for 2017-18 and 2018-19 were a “small percentage” of the total returns filed for the two financial years.

He said that the accumulation of demand notifications was also due to an extension in the deadline for taxpayers to file annual returns for the two years. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) went into effect on July 1, 2017.

The deadline for filing annual returns for the 2017-18 fiscal year was extended until February 7, 2020, while for 2018-19 it was extended until December 2020.

According to the GST law, every registered person is required to file an annual return for each fiscal year on or before December 31 of the following fiscal year. As a result, the deadline for filing the annual return for the financial year 2022-23 is December 31, 2023.

“The last date for filing returns has been extended at the taxpayers’ request. As a result, returns were also submitted at a late date, and officials were put under a lot of pressure (to examine the forms). As a result, an awful situation has arisen. One hopes that as time goes on, this scenario will be rectified and that we will not have all of the planned notifications pending at the same time. It happened in 2017-18, and we’ll see how we can cope with it,” Priya explained.

According to him, the Central GST authorities have delivered around 30,000-33,000 letters to GST registered entities for non-payment of taxes.