Daijiworld Media Network

New Delhi, Sep 2: The Rs 200 per day penalty for taxpayers who failed to file the first GST returns within the deadline has been waived off by the government. However, taxpayers will have to bear the interest on late payment of dues, the Finance Ministry said on Saturday.

Earlier, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that the taxpayers who failed to meet the deadline will have to bear a penalty of Rs 200 per day of which Rs 100 is for Central GST and Rs 100 for State GST.

However, after recommendations of Goods and Services Tax Council, the Finance Ministry in a series of tweets on Saturday said, "Late fee for all taxpayers who could not file GSTR-3B for month of July has been waived, but not the interest on late payment of dues. Interest will be applicable to all taxpayers who have not discharged their complete GST liability for July by August 25”.

The taxpayers had to file the GST returns for July by August 25 and those claiming transitional input tax credit by August 28. However, over 20 lakh tax payers failed to comply with the deadline.

A total of about 5.95 million taxpayers for July should have filed the GST returns, but till August 29 only about 3.83 million (or 64.42 per cent) had complied, Jaitley had said earlier.

New Deadlines

The Finance Ministry in a circular on Friday evening also said that the taxpayers who might have made errors in filing the first GST returns could make corrections while filing the GSTR-1 and GSTR-2 forms for the month of July.

Form GSTR-1 reflects sales of a business while GSTR-2 reflects purchases.

For July, GSTR-1 needs to be filed between September 1 and 5 and GSTR-2 between September 6 and 10. The corrected data would be auto-populated and reflected in GSTR-3, which is a combination of sales and purchases. GSTR-3 for July needs to be filed between September 11 and 15.