The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (“CBIC”) vide Circular No. 39/13/2018-GST dated April 03, 2018 has decided to put in place an IT-Grievance Redressal Mechanism to address the difficulties faced by a section of taxpayers owing to technical glitches on the GST portal.
The relief could be in the nature of allowing filing of any Form or Return prescribed in law or amending any Form or Return already filed.
Redressal Committee will essentially address problems with filing / amending of any statutory Form or Return that affect large section of taxpayers and not localized issues of individual taxpayers like non-availability of internet connectivity or failure of power supply.
Processing and resolution:
- Taxpayers shall make an application to the field officers or the nodal officer, as appointed by Goods and Services Tax Network (“GSTN”), Central and State government.
- These applications shall be compiled by the nodal officer and forwarded to GSTN.
- GSTN shall examine the applications received and identify the issue involved where a large section of tax payers are affected. GSTN shall forward the same to GST Implementation Committee (“GIC”), which shall act as the IT Grievance Redressal Committee with suggested solutions for resolution of the problem.
- IT-Grievance Redressal Committee may give necessary directions to GSTN and field formations of the tax administrations for implementation of the decision.
Legal issues:
Such Committee can recommend waiver of fine or penalty upon failure of taxpayer in filing return or form due to IT related glitch
As regards resolution of stuck TRAN-1 and filing of GSTR-3B, CBIC explains inter alia that:
- (i). all such taxpayers, who could not complete the process of TRAN-1 filing (original or revised) on or before December 27, 2017 due to IT glitch, shall be provided the facility to complete TRAN-1 filing,
- (ii). last date of filing of TRAN-1 is not being extended in general and only the identified taxpayers shall be allowed to complete the process,
- taxpayer cannot amend the amount of credit in TRAN-1 during this process, and
- taxpayers shall complete the TRAN-1 filing by April 30, 2018 and filing of GSTR-3B, which could not be filed for such TRAN-1, by May 31, 2018.
Read more at: http://www.cbec.gov.in/resources/htdocs-cbec/gst/circularno-39-cgst.pdf