The government, on the recommendations of the Goods and Services Tax Council, has waived the penalty of Rs 200 per day for taxpayers who failed to file the first GST returns within the deadline. The taxpayers will, however, have to bear the interest on late payment of dues.
The Finance Ministry elaborating the same said that 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.
A Finance Ministry circular also said that 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. It stated that there would be a reconciliation of the forms to see if there was any mismatch and the under-reporting or excess-reporting of the tax would thus be corrected. The corrected data would be auto-populated and reflected in GSTR-3, which is a combination of sales and purchases.
Earlier, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that 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, he had further said that the taxpayers who failed to meet the deadline will have to bear a penalty of Rs 200 per day -- Rs 100 for Central GST and Rs 100 for State GST.