Synopsis of Notifications Issued on 30th July 2021

Synopsis of Notifications Issued on 30^th July 2021

Notification No. 29/2021 – Central Tax

As part of ease of doing business, in the Finance Bill 2021, the GST Audit has been scrapped and Annul Returns are being simplified with self-certification of the taxpayer only.

The same has been made effective from 1^st August 2021.

Notification No. 30/2021 – Central Tax

As per the Finance Bill 2021, changes have been announced for the formats of GSTR – 9 and 9C.

With this notification GSTR -9C is now self-certified but the format will remain the same except for few changes.

Annul Return i.e., GSTR – 9 has to be filed on or before 31st December, which means the due date for filing of Annual Return for the FY 2020- 2021 is 31st Dec 2021.

Sr. No	Form Type	Tax Payer Category	Due Date
1	Form GSTR – 9	Regular Tax payers	31st Dec 2021
2	Form GSTR – 9A	Composition Tax payers
3	Form GSTR – 9B	e-commerce operators	31st Dec 2021
4	Form GSTR – 9C (Reconciliation Statement) (Applicable to taxpayers whose turnover is above ₹ 5 crores	Regular Tax payers	31st Dec 2021

Following are the changes made to Form GSTR – 9

The return is not made applicable to FY 2020-21.

Following are the changes made to Form GSTR – 9C

Certification will be self-certified by the taxpayer and does not require certification of a practicing Cost or a Charted Accountant.

Others Column has been added to the following tables

Table 9 – Reconciliation of rate wise liability and amount payable thereon

Table 11 – Additional amount payable but not paid (due to re

Part V – Additional Liability due to non-reconciliation

Certification Section – Part B has been dropped

Notification No. 31/2021 – Central Tax

 Taxpayers having aggregate turnover below ₹ 2 crores are not exempted from filing of Annual Return i.e., Form GSTR – 9.

The effective date of the Notification is 1st August 2021.

Disclaimer

Any views or opinions represented above are personal and belong solely to the author and do not represent those of people, institutions, or organizations that the author may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity unless explicitly stated. Any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, or individual.

Filing of Annual returns by composition taxpayers. – Negative Liability in GSTR-4

Filing of Annual returns by composition taxpayers. – Negative Liability in GSTR-4

Filing of Annual returns by composition taxpayers. – Negative Liability in GSTR-4 Instances have come to notice where taxpayers are reporting negative liability appearing in their GSTR-4
Background: Since FY 2019-20, composition taxpayers has to pay the liability through Form GST CMP-08 on quarterly basis while GSTR-4 Return is required to be filed on annual basis after end of a financial year.

Reason of Negative Liability in GSTR4: The liability of the complete year is required to be declared in GSTR-4 under applicable tax rates. Taxpayers should fill up table 6 of GSTR-4 mandatorily. In case, there is no liability, the said table may be filled up with ‘0’ value. If no liability is declared in table 6, it is presumed that no liability is required to be paid, even though, taxpayer may have paid the liability through Form GST CMP-08. In such cases, liability paid through GST CMP-08 becomes excess tax paid and moves to Negative Liability Statement for utilization of same for subsequent tax period’s liability.

What the taxpayer did wrongly: Liability paid through Form GST CMP-08 is auto-populated in table 5 of the GSTR-4 for convenience of the taxpayers. Taxpayers who do not fill up table 6 of GSTR-4 i.e. no liability is declared, even though, taxpayer may have paid the liability through Form GST CMP-08; since the ‘Tax payable’ in GSTR-4 is computed after reducing the liability declared in GST CMP-08 and then auto-populated in table 5. Thus, if nothing is declared in table 6, then the negative liability entry appears in GSTR-4.

How to proceed in case of negative liability: If table 6 of GSTR-4 has not been filled due to oversight, a ticket may be raised to nullify the amount available in negative liability statement. If there is no liability to be paid during the year, the liability paid through Form GST CMP-08 shall move to negative liability statement and the same excess amount can be utilised to pay the liability of future tax periods.

Analysis

It is a welcome move that the GSTN has provided the inputs on a pro active manner. The composition scheme is opted by small taxpayers and for them cash flows are really a challenge especially in time of pandemic. It would have been really great if the law has a provision if excess cash is paid by composition taxpayers and laying in the Liability Register un utilized, the same can be claimed as refund. Similar provision is seen in Malaysian GST where the taxpayer can take refund of the ITC laying in their. though we cannot compare the provisions of other countries, we can take a cue from there and bring necessary amendments in near future. This will really help in improve in the ease of doing business.

GST Tip – 222

As per the Composition Rules, a person who is registered as a casual taxable person or non-resident taxable person cannot apply for registration under GST for composition taxpayer.