CBIC clarifes fully electronic refund process through FORM GST RFD-01

CBIC clarifes fully electronic refund process through FORM GST RFD-01

Circular No. 125/44/2019 - GST

 

CBEC-20/16/04/18-GST Government of India Ministry of Finance Department of Revenue Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs GST Policy Wing ****

New Delhi, Dated the 18th November, 2019

To, The Principal Chief Commissioners/Chief Commissioners/Principal Commissioners/ Commissioners of Central Tax (All) / The Principal Director Generals/ Director Generals (All) The Principal Chief Controller of Accounts (CBIC) Madam/Sir, Subject: Fully electronic refund process through FORM GST RFD-01 and single disbursement – regarding After roll out of GST w.e.f. 01.07.2017, on account of the unavailability of electronic refund module on the common portal, a temporary mechanism had to be devised and implemented wherein applicants were required to file the refund application in FORM GST RFD-01A on the common portal, take a print out of the same and submit it physically to the jurisdictional tax office along with all supporting documents. Further processing of these refund applications, i.e. issuance of acknowledgement of the refund application, issuance of deficiency memo, passing of provisional/final order, payment advice etc. was also being done manually. In order to make the process of submission of the refund application electronic, Circular No. 79/53/2018-GST dated 31.12.2018 was issued wherein it was specified that the refund application in FORM GST RFD- 01A, along with all supporting documents, shall be submitted electronically. However, various post submission stages of processing of the refund application continued to be manual. 2. The necessary capabilities for making the refund procedure fully electronic, in which all steps of submission and processing shall be undertaken electronically, have been deployed on the common portal with effect from 26.09.2019. Accordingly, the Circulars issued earlier laying down the guidelines for manual submission and processing of refund claims need to be suitably modified and a fresh set of guidelines needs to be issued for electronic submission and processing of refund claims. With this objective and in order to ensure uniformity in the implementation of the provisions of law across field formations, the Board, in exercise of its powers conferred by section 168 (1) of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 (hereinafter referred to as “CGST Act”), hereby lays down the procedure for electronic submission and processing of refund applications in supersession of earlier Circulars viz. Circular No. 17/17/2017-GST dated 15.11.2017, 24/24/2017-GST dated 21.12.2017, 37/11/2018-GST dated 15.03.2018, 45/19/2018-GST dated 30.05.2018 (including corrigendum dated 18.07.2019), 59/33/2018-GST dated 04.09.2018, 70/44/2018-GST dated 26.10.2018, 79/53/2018-GST dated 31.12.2018 and 94/13/2019-GST dated 28.03.2019. However, the provisions of the said Circulars shall continue to apply for all r efund applications filed on the common portal before 26.09.2019 and the said applications shall c ontinue to be processed manually as prior to deployment of new system. Filing of refund applications in FORM GST RFD-01 3. With effect from 26.09.2019, the applications for the following types of refunds shall be filed in FORM GST RFD 01 on the common portal and the same shall be processed electronically:

a. Refund of unutilized input tax credit (ITC) on account of exports without payment of tax; b. Refund of tax paid on export of services with payment of tax; c. Refund of unutilized ITC on account of supplies made to SEZ Unit/SEZ Developer without payment of tax; d. Refund of tax paid on supplies made to SEZ Unit/SEZ Developer with payment of tax; e. Refund of unutilized ITC on account of accumulation due to inverted tax structure; f. Refund to supplier of tax paid on deemed export supplies; g. Refund to recipient of tax paid on deemed export supplies; h. Refund of excess balance in the electronic cash ledger; i. Refund of excess payment of tax; j. Refund of tax paid on intra-State supply which is subsequently held to be inter-State supply and vice versa; k. Refund on account of assessment/provisional assessment/appeal/any other order; l. Refund on account of “any other” ground or 4. The following modalities shall be followed for all refund applications filed in FORM GST RFD-01 on the common portal with effect from 26.09.2019: a. FORM GST RFD-01 shall be filled on the common portal by an applicant seeking refund under any of the categories mentioned above. This shall entail filing of statements/declarations/undertakings which are part of FORM GST RFD-01 itself, and also uploading of other documents/invoices which shall be required to be provided by the applicant for processing of the refund claim. A comprehensive list of such documents is provided at Annexure-A and it is clarified that no other document needs to be provided by the applicant at the stage of filing of the refund application. The facility of uploading these other documents/invoices shall be available on the common portal where four documents, each of maximum 5MB, may be uploaded along with the refund Neither the refund application in FORM GST RFD-01 nor any of the supporting documents shall be required to be physically submitted to the office of the jurisdictional proper officer. b. The Application Reference Number (ARN) will be generated only after the applicant has completed the process of filing the refund application in FORM GST RFD-01, and has completed uploading of all the supporting documents/ undertaking/ statements/invoices and, where required, the amount has been debited from the electronic credit/cash ledger. c. As soon as the ARN is generated, the refund application along with all the supporting documents shall be transferred electronically to the jurisdictional proper officer who shall be able to view it on the system. The application shall be deemed to have been filed under sub-rule (2) of rule 90 of the CGST Rules on the date of generation of the said ARN and the time limit of 15 days to issue an acknowledgement or a deficiency memo, as the case may be, shall be counted from the said date. This will obviate the need for an applicant to visit the jurisdictional tax office for the submission of the refund application and /or any of the supporting documents. Accordingly, the acknowledgement for the complete application (FORM GST RFD-02) or deficiency memo (FORM GST RFD-03), as the case may be, would be issued electronically by the jurisdictional tax officer based on the documents so received from the common portal. d. If a refund application is electronically transmitted to the wrong jurisdictional officer, he/she shall reassign it to the correct jurisdictional officer electronically as soon as possible, but not later than three working days, from the date of generation of the Deficiency memos shall not be issued in such cases merely on the ground that the applications were received electronically in the wrong jurisdiction. e. It may be noted that the facility to reassign such refund applications is already available with the Commissioner or the officer(s) authorized by him. 5. The refund application in FORM GST RFD-01 filed by all taxpayers, who have already been assigned to the Centre or the State tax authorities, shall be automatically forwarded by the common portal to the concerned authority. At the same time, there might be some migrated taxpayers, who have remained unassigned so The refund application in FORM GST RFD-01 filed by such unassigned taxpayers shall be forwarded, for processing, by the common portal to the jurisdictional proper officer of the tax authority from which the taxpayer has originally migrated. Such officers will continue to process these applications up to the stage of issuance of final order in FORM GST RFD-06 and the related payment order in FORM GST RFD-05 even if the applicant is assigned to the counterpart tax authority while the refund claim is under processing. However, if such an applicant gets assigned to one of the tax authorities after generation of the ARN and a deficiency memo gets issued for the refund application submitted by him, then the re-submitted refund application, after correction of deficiencies, shall be treated as a fresh refund application and shall be forwarded to the jurisdictional proper officer of the tax authority to which the taxpayer has now been assigned, irrespective of which authority handled the initial refund claim and issued the deficiency memo. 6. Any refund claim for a tax period may be filed only after furnishing all the returns in FORM GSTR-1 and FORM GSTR-3B which were due to be furnished on or before the date on which the refund application is being However, in case of a claim for refund filed by a composition taxpayer, a non-resident taxable person, or an Input Service Distributor (ISD) furnishing of returns in FORM GSTR-1 and FORM GSTR-3B is not required. Instead, the applicant should have furnished returns in FORM GSTR-4 (along with FORM GST CMP-08), FORM GSTR-5 or FORM GSTR-6, as the case may be, which were due to be furnished on or before the date on which the refund application is being filed. 7. Since the functionality of furnishing of FORM GSTR-2 and FORM GSTR-3 remains unimplemented, it has been decided by the GST Council to sanction refund of provisionally accepted input tax credit. However, the applicants applying for refund must give an undertaking to the effect that the amount of refund sanctioned would be paid back to the Government with interest in case it is found subsequently that the requirements of clause (c) of sub-section (2) of section 16 read with sub-section (2) of section 42 of the CGST Act have not been complied with in respect of the amount refunded. This undertaking should be submitted electronically along with the refund claim. 8. The applicant, at his option, may file a refund claim for a tax period or by clubbing successive tax periods. The period for which refund claim has been filed, however, cannot spread across different financial years. Registered persons having aggregate turnover of up to Rs. 1.5 crore in the preceding financial year or the current financial year opting to file FORM GSTR-1 on quarterly basis, can only apply for refund on a quarterly basis or clubbing successive quarters as aforesaid. However, refund claims under categories listed at (a), (c) and (e) in para 3 above must be filed by the applicant chronologically. This means that an applicant, after submitting a refund application under any of these categories for a certain period, shall not be subsequently allowed to file a refund claim under the same category for any previous period. This principle / limitation, however, shall not apply in cases where a fresh application is being filed pursuant to a deficiency memo having been issued earlier. Deficiency Memos 9. It may be noted that if the application for refund is complete in terms of sub-rule (2), (3) and (4) of rule 89 of the CGST Rules, an acknowledgement in FORM GST RFD-02 should be issued within 15 days of the filing of the refund application. The date of generation of ARN for FORM GST RFD-01 is to be considered as the date of filing of the refund application. Sub-rule (3) of rule 90 of the CGST Rules provides for communication of deficiencies in FORM GST RFD-03 where deficiencies are noticed within the aforesaid period of 15 days. It is clarified that either an acknowledgement or a deficiency memo should be issued within the aforesaid period of 15 days starting from the date of generation of ARN. Once an acknowledgement has been issued in relation to a refund application, no deficiency memo, on any grounds, may be subsequently issued for the said application. 10. After a deficiency memo has been issued, the refund application would not be further processed and a fresh application would have to be filed. Any amount of input tax credit/cash debited from electronic credit/ cash ledger would be re-credited automatically once the deficiency memo has been issued. It may be noted that the re-credit would take place automatically and no order in FORM GST PMT-03 is required to be issued. The applicant is required to rectify the deficiencies highlighted in deficiency memo and file fresh refund application electronically in FORM GST RFD-01 again for the same period and this application would have a new and distinct ARN. 11. It is further clarified that once an application has been submitted afresh, pursuant to a deficiency memo, the proper officer will not serve another deficiency memo with respect to the application for the same period, unless the deficiencies pointed out in the original deficiency memo remain un-rectified, either wholly or partly, or any other substantive deficiency is noticed subsequently. 12. It is also clarified that since a refund application filed after correction of deficiency is treated as a fresh refund application, such a rectified refund application, submitted after correction of deficiencies, shall also have to be submitted within 2 years of the relevant date, as defined in the explanation after sub-section (14) of section 54 of the CGST Act. Provisional Refund 13. Doubts get raised as to whether provisional refund would be given even in those cases where the proper officer prima-facie has sufficient reasons to believe that there are irregularities in the refund application which would result in rejection of whole or part of the refund amount so claimed. It is clarified that in such cases, the proper officer shall refund on a provisional basis ninety percent of the refundable amount of the claim (amount of refund claim less the inadmissible portion of refund so found) in accordance with the provisions of rule 91 of the CGST Rules. Final sanction of refund shall be made in accordance with the provisions of rule 92 of the CGST Rules. 14. It is further clarified that there is no prohibition under the law preventing a proper officer from sanctioning the entire amount within 7 days of the issuance of acknowledgement through issuance of FORM GST RFD-06, instead of grant of provisional refund of 90 per cent of the amount claimed through FORM GST RFD-04. If the proper officer is fully satisfied about the eligibility of a refund claim on account of zero-rated supplies, and is of the opinion that no further scrutiny is required, the proper officer may issue final order in FORM GST RFD-06 within 7 days of the issuance of acknowledgement. In such cases, the issuance of a provisional refund order in FORM GST RFD-04 will not be necessary. 15. Further, there are doubts on the procedure to be followed in situations where the final refund amount to be sanctioned in FORM GST RFD-06 is less than the amount of refund sanctioned provisionally through FORM GST RFD-04. For example, consider a situation where an applicant files a refund claim of Rs.100/- on account of zero-rated supplies. The proper officer, after prima-facie examination of the application, sanctions Rs. 90 as provisional refund through FORM GST RFD-04 and the same is electronically credited to his bank account. However, on detailed examination, it appears to the proper officer that only an amount of Rs. 70 is admissible as refund to the applicant. In such cases, the proper officer shall have to issue a show cause notice to the applicant, in FORM GST RFD-08, under section 54 of the CGST Act, read with section 73 o r 74 of the CGST Act, requiring the applicant to show cause as to why: (a) the amount claimed of Rs. 30/- should not be rejected as per the relevant provisions of the law; and (b) the amount of Rs. 20/- erroneously refunded should not be recovered under section 73 or section 74 of the CGST Act, as the case may be, along with interest and penalty, if any. 16. The proper officer for adjudicating the above case shall be the same as the proper officer for sanctioning refund under section 54 of the CGST Act. The above notice shall be adjudicated following the principles of natural justice and an order shall be issued, in FORM GST RFD-06, under section 54 of the CGST Act, read with section 73 or section 74 of the CGST Act, as the case may be. If the adjudicating authority decides against the applicant in respect of both points (a) and (b) above, then an amount of Rs. 70/- will have to be sanctioned in FORM GST RFD-06, and an amount of Rs. 20/-, along with interest and penalty, if any, shall be entered by the officer in the electronic liability register of the applicant through issuance of FORM GST DRC-07. Further, if the application pertains to refund of unutilized/accumulated ITC, then Rs. 30/-, i.e. the amount rejected, shall have to be re-credited to the electronic credit ledger of the applicant through FORM GST PMT-03. However, this re-credit shall be done only after the receipt of an undertaking from the applicant to the effect that he shall not file an appeal or in case he files an appeal, the same has been finally decided against the applicant. In such cases, it may be noted that FORM GST RFD- 08 and FORM GST RFD-06, are to be considered as show cause notice and adjudication order respectively, under both section 54 (for rejection of refund) and section 73/74 of the CGST Act as the case may be (for recovery of erroneous refund). 17. It is further clarified that no adjustment or withholding of refund, as provided under sub- sections (10) and (11) of section 54 of the CGST Act, shall be allowed in respect of the amount of refund which has been provisionally sanctioned. In cases where there is an outstanding recoverable amount due from the applicant, the proper officer, instead of granting refund on provisional basis, may process and sanction refund on final basis at the earliest and recover the amount from the amount so sanctioned. Click Here to Read Further Click Here to Buy CA Final Pendrive Classes at Discounted Rate