GST late fees waiver to be discussed in next GST council meeting

After continuous request from industry and professional regarding waiver of late fees for filing of GST returns, the government has announced on 01-06-2020 to take up this issue of GST late fee waiver in the next GST council meeting.

Due to current crisis situation for dealers below Rs. 5 crore turnover, the late fee waiver has already been announced for returns for February 2020 to June 2020.

However there are various MSME registered dealers who could not file their returns due to huge late fee levied by the GST law.

The professionals and industry should make proper representation with following points.

• Requesting late fee waiver is not the solution.
• The law should be streamlined permanently to avoid such requests which are happening on continuous basis.
• Late fee amount should be in consonance with the net cash liability of that particular return period.
• Maximum limit of late fee should be fixed. It cannot be infinite based on number of days of delay.

Hope these points get discussed in the next GST Council Meeting

Amit Mundhra FCA

Author is a member of ICAI and he can be reached at amit.mundhra@gmail.com