Offering relief to the trade and industry, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has issued a couple of notifications easing the compliance norms under the GST regime, as per a report in LiveMint. The first such relief refers to the credit being availed by companies on the GST they have already paid to their suppliers. This has to be supported by documents, invoices or credit notes issued by the suppliers. In the absence of such supporting material, only 10% of the amount is allowed as credit. Now this notification by CBIC allows for the full credit to be taken now and the final adjustment to be made in the returns to be submitted in September, 2020. The full credit can be taken during the February till August 2020 period.
This flexibility allows the companies some liquidity during these tough times of lockdown and the after-effects of the same. The companies, while filing their returns for September 2020 will mention “cumulative adjustment of input tax credit for April to August (or whichever actual period)”. CBIC has obtained the necessary approval from the GST council for issuing this notification.
Another measure of relief offered by CBIC is to extend the validity of the electronic permits (e-way bills) till April 30. These would be typically the ones issued around the time before the lockdown was announced and may have validity till April 15. These now get extended till April 30. Hopefully, the lockdown will be lifted with effect from April 15 and the goods can be moved to their destinations before April 30.
In line with the extension in different deadlines which the Finance Minister had announced in her first media interaction after the lockdown, the due dates for filing various statutory reports and returns have been extended by the CBIC as well.