The Department of Revenue has tweaked the Central GST rules to enable taxpayers withdraw refund applications and exclude the time period involved between filing of such applications and any deficiency found in the applications from the relevant deadlines.
In a notification issued on Tuesday, the department also laid out specific formats for officers assessing refund requests to withhold the release of such claimed refunds, requiring them to place on record the personal hearing in the matter and detailed reasons for holding back refunds.
Similarly, withdrawal of refund applications has been allowed for the first time with the government notifying a format in which such applications can be pulled back by taxpayers on spelling out the grounds for withdrawing the refund plea. For instance, taxpayers can say they filed the refund plea by mistake, or mentioned wrong details in the concerned forms, among other causes for withdrawing their applications.
“With this amendment, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs has rationalised the refund provisions,” said Abhishek Jain, tax partner, EY.
“A few changes such as the option to withdraw refund application filed by the assessee and exclusion of the time period from the date of filing of refund application to date of issuance of deficiency memo by the officer from the overall time limit to file refund application, were awaited and advocated by the industry players for a long time,” Mr. Jain said, terming this a taxpayer-friendly measure.
