NEW DELHI: The Union government has notified decisions taken by Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council in the meeting last week including granting exemption to taxpayers with aggregate turnover of up to ₹2 crore in 2021-22 from filing annual returns for that year. The move is likely to help small businesses by easing their compliance burden.
NEW DELHI: The Union government has notified decisions taken by Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council in the meeting last week including granting exemption to taxpayers with aggregate turnover of up to ₹2 crore in 2021-22 from filing annual returns for that year. The move is likely to help small businesses by easing their compliance burden.
Businesses have also been allowed to make tax payments on the GST Network portal using IMPS and UPI payment modes. These were decided by the GST Council during the two-day meeting in Chandigarh last week.
"These changes will help the small players in undertaking compliances, and will lighten the burden for taxpayers with less than 2 cr turnover to the extent of filing of annual return under GST,said Abhishek Jain, indirect tax partner, KPMG.
In another decision that would help small businesses, a suitable extension has been granted for delayed filing of refund applications during the Covid-19 period (1 March, 2020 to 28 February, 2022. "That will enable numerous exporters to encash the refunds stuck in litigation, said Rajat Mohan, senior partner, AMRG Associates.
These decisions were part of a slew of measures decided by the Council in the meeting last week to increase revenue and plug leakages, which included easier compliance, tightened enforcement, and rate rationalization measures. The Council did away with a raft of exemptions and increased GST rates on others, besides correcting inverted duties.
Cash ledger balance can also be transferred from one GST registered entity to another under the same PAN. This will allow unblocking of working capital to companies that have huge cash credits.
The government has also notified a provision that would enable automatic revocation of GST registrations cancelled once the return filing is regularized. "This is heartening to note. This will reduce the time and effort spent by taxpayers in getting registrations revoked even after regularization of the return filings. It will reduce the interaction and improve the faceless compliances under GST," said Mahesh Jaising, Partner, Leader – Indirect Tax, Deloitte India.
The government has also notified the amendment to expand GST refunds in case of inverted duty rate structure, and allowing refund of input services as well. "This is a welcome and a much awaited move. This decision will benefit several sectors including pharma, apparels etc. These sectors will now be able to price their products more effectively on account of the additional refunds that would now become available. It will ensure that there is no effective additional cost on account of blocked credits. This has been a long pending ask of Industry and has been under discussion for a while now, said Jaising.