KSA Infomatrix

The government on Monday kicked off a special fortnight-long drive to facilitate pending GST refunds which will last till July 30. During this period, dedicated refund cells and help desks would be provided for exporters to get their refund claims processed in each commissionerate, an official statement said. This is the third such refund fortnight to clear  Goods and Services Tax  (GST) refunds after similar drives earlier held in March and June. "However, in order to liquidate pendency further, and to handhold and guide the trade for applying for the refund claims in a proper manner, it has been decided to observe another refund fortnight from July 16 to July 30," the statement said, acknowledging that refunds of GST have been a concern for the government and trade for the past several months. In the first refund fortnight, Rs 4,265 crore of integrated-GST (IGST) refunds and Rs 1,136 crore of input tax credit refunds were sanctioned by the  Central Board o...

Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia today said the all powerful GST Council will consider bringing petroleum products under Goods and Services Tax (GST) and it could happen in phases.  Speaking on the issue, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs Chairman S Ramesh said although there is demand for bringing petroleum products under GST, the GST Council will have to finalise modalities.  Currently, diesel, petrol, crude oil, natural gas and aviation turbine fuel are outside the purview of goods and services tax, and states have the right to impose value added tax on these items.  "One of the demands that is there before us, we will see... everything will happen in stages," Adhia said at an event here.  The civil aviation ministry has time and again voiced its concern on the high rate of taxes on aviation turbine fuel, which accounts for a significant chunk of an airline's operational costs and also has a bearing on air fares.  Earlier, the civil aviat...

The indirect-tax department has detected goods and services tax (GST) evasion of Rs 2,000 crore over the last few months, John Joseph, member, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), said The indirect-tax department has detected goods and services tax (GST) evasion of Rs 2,000 crore over the last few months, John Joseph, member, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), said on Friday, adding that a tenth of this came to light only last week. Independent analysts have, however, felt that the tax evasion exposed may be only a fraction of its actual incidence, given the “very high” transitional credits — a total of `1.6 lakh crore by December-end — claimed by a section of taxpayers for the taxes paid in the pre-GST regime. Suspected instances of undeserved input tax credit (ITC) claims — scores of such claims made in the summary returns GSTR-3B have been detected and investigations into these are going on — and the continuing (though narrowing) gap between...

Notices seek large volume of documents for year before GST Taxpayers are finding it difficult to comply with notices on detailed verification of transitional credit claims made by them under the Goods and Services Tax (GST), as the tax department has asked them to submit large volumes of documents within seven days of receiving the notices. One such notice seen by FE has asked for “copies of Cenvatable invoices i.e inputs, input services and capital goods for the period 01.04.2016 to 30.06.2017.” This alone would entail hundreds of pages of invoices over a period of 14 months, even as these notices requires a plethora of other documents under 12 other categories of mandatory submissions. “We have sought 15 days from the department to comply with the notice as it is physically not possible to gather all these documents without impacting the daily business,” a business owner, who has received this notice, told FE on the condition of anonymity. He added that he had claimed tra...

The revenue department has decided to keep in abeyance GST provisions relating to reverse charge mechanism, tax deducted at source (TDS) and tax collected at source (TCS) for another three months till September-end. The revenue department has decided to keep in abeyance GST provisions relating to reverse charge mechanism, tax deducted at source (TDS) and tax collected at source (TCS) for another three months till September-end. The GST Council in its meeting on March 10 had suspended the provision for deduction of TDS and collection of TCS, as well as the implementation of the reverse charge mechanism (RCM) till June 30. A senior revenue official said the GST Implementation Committee (GIC), headed by the Revenue Secretary, has decided to keep in abeyance the TDS/TCS provision and GST by way of RCM by another three months. “The GIC has decided to postpone by three months the TDS/TCS and RCM provisions. Notification will be issued shortly. The GIC decision has been circulated to ...