During the fast growing corona in the country, trade organizations which have demanded lockdown in the more affected states have now made another demand. The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has now demanded cancellation of mandatory provisions of GST and Income Tax in view of other restrictions like lockdown, partial lockdown, night curfew imposed by various state governments of the country including Delhi.
In this regard, two letters have been sent by CAIT to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. The first letter said that the central government should allow traders to compulsorily comply with the provisions of 11 types of GST so as to relieve traders from heavy fines and interest imposed on traders across the country for non-compliance of these provisions so to receive.
At the same time, by sending another letter to Sitharaman, he has also demanded to postpone the compliance of 15 types of provisions to be made in the income tax in the month of April. On behalf of traders, it has been said that even after non-compliance of these provisions, traders will have to pay late fees and interest, which will be a big financial burden.
It has been said by CAIT that if the compliance of GST and Income Tax Act in the month of April is not followed in time, then interest and heavy late fees may have to be paid. Whereas in the difficult times of Covid epidemic when all the state governments are taking precautionary measures and to prevent the spread of Covid in their respective states, restrictions like complete curfew, night curfew, 72 hours complete lockdown, complete lockdown, control area, etc.
Under these circumstances, it will not be possible for the traders to follow all the statutory provisions, hence the delay in observance of these provisions will not be considered as an offense intentionally committed by the traders, permanently reducing the fees and penalties for delay till the situation becomes normal in the country to be postponed for at least three months.