Crores of traders urge FM Nirmala Sitharaman to defer GST, income tax compliances by three month

 









Traders’ body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has urged the government to defer as many as 11 compliances under Goods and Services Tax (GST) and 15 compliances under the Income Tax Act by three months in the wake of Covid crisis in the country. The confederation, which represents around 8 crore traders across 40,000 trade associations in India, requested Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in a communication to postpone these compliances that traders have to comply with in April. “Non-compliance of these stipulations will attract huge penalties on traders across the country,” CAIT said.

“In these tough times when all the state governments are taking strict precautionary measures such as complete curfew, night curfew, 72-hour lockdown, complete lockdown, containment zones, etc., in order to restrict the spread of Covid-19 in their states, it will not be possible to comply with all these statutory compliances in time,” CAIT National President BC Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said in a statement.

Returns including GSTR-3B, GSTR-1, GSTR-4, CMP-08, GSTR-5, GSTR-5A, GSTR-6, GSTR-7, and GSTR-8 have been due in April along with the due date for issue of TDS certificate for tax deducted under section 194-IA, IB, and 194M, a quarterly statement in respect of foreign remittances in form 15CC, furnishing form 3BB, form 24G, challan-cum-statement in respect of tax deducted under section 194-IA, etc., of the Income Tax Act, according to CAIT.

“For Delhi, the daily business loss due to lockdown is likely to be around Rs 600 crore while for overall India, the daily loss could be around Rs 30,000 crore taking into account full lockdown, partial lockdown, night curfews, and other forms of restrictions,” Khandelwal had told Financial Express Online earlier this week.

The government, on Saturday, had announced relief for taxpayers, tax consultants and other stakeholders, by extending the deadline for payments under the Direct Tax Vivad Se Vishwas Act, 2020 and some compliances under the Income Tax Act by two months till June 30. These included, “Time limit for passing of any order for assessment or reassessment under the Income-tax Act, 1961 the time limit for which is provided under section 153 or section 153B thereof; Time limit for passing an order consequent to direction of DRP under sub-section (13) of section 144C of the Act; Time limit for issuance of notice under section 148 of the Act for reopening the assessment where income has escaped assessment; and Time Limit for sending intimation of processing of Equalisation Levy under sub-section (1) of section 168 of the Finance Act 2016,” according to the Finance Ministry statement.

India has been witnessing a surge in Covid cases since mid-February amid the second wave of the pandemic. The country, facing a shortage of critical life-saving supplies such as medical oxygen, reported 3,49,691 new cases, 2,767 deaths, and 2,17,113 discharges in the last 24 hours, as per Union Health Ministry. India’s total number of Covid cases jumped to 1,69,60,172, while active cases surpassed the 26-lakh mark, as per the ministry’s data.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Centre appeals against ruling on levy of GST on maintenance charges to resident welfare associations

Image
  The Centre has preferred a writ appeal before the Madras High Court against a single judge's order that flat or villa owners paying more than ₹7,500 a month towards maintenance charges to their residents’ welfare associations must pay Goods and Services Tax (GST) at the rate of 18% only for the amount exceeding ₹7,500 and not for the entire monthly contribution. Justices T.S. Sivagnanam and Sathi Kumar Sukumara Kurup on Wednesday allowed an application filed by the Centre to dispense with production of a certified copy of the judgment passed by Justice Anita Sumanth recently and directed the Registry to list the appeal for admission in the usual course. Justice Sumanth had in July this year quashed an order passed by the Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR) on June 21, 2019 as well as a consequent circular issued by the Department of Revenue under the Union Finance Ministry on July 22, 2019 since both of them had insisted upon collecting GST for entire monthly contribution. The jud...
Read more

Seven key things to know before filing income tax return (ITR) for FY21

Image
  The last date to file income tax return for the financial year 2020-21 has been extended to September 30, 2021. Although there is more than two months left for the deadline to end, it is always recommended to complete the task as soon as possible and not to wait for the last minute. Worth mentioning here is that the income tax department last month launched a new e-filing portal (www.incometax.gov.in) to speed up the processing of tax returns. The I-T department will soon launch a mobile application, having all the features of the new portal. This year taxpayers have to take care of the following changes in the ITR filing process. 1) A new utility named JSON has been launched for filing tax return forms for FY21. At present, only three forms, ITR 1, 2 and 4 have been released. These new forms will import pre-fill data such as personal details, salary income, dividend income, interest income, capital gains and all the information available in Form 26AS. 2) Taxpayers will have the ...
Read more

Income Tax Dept detects ₹350 cr unaccounted cash receipts after raid in Rajkot

Image
  The Income Tax Department carried out a search and seizure operation on a real estate group based in Gujarat's Rajkot and found unaccounted cash receipts in various projects of approximately ₹350 crore, the Finance Ministry said on Friday. The group is among Gujarat’s prominent real estate builders and developers and is actively engaged in real estate, construction and land trading businesses in and around Rajkot. More than 40 premises were covered in the search operation. During the course of operation, many incriminating documents and digital evidences were seized indicating involvement of the group in unaccounted transactions. The IT sleuths found substantial evidence of transactions outside the regular books of accounts, unaccounted cash expenses, cash advances received and interest paid in cash. Evidence of on-money payments in real estate projects-flats, shops and land deals has also been found. Total unaccounted cash receipts in various projects of approximately ₹350 crore...
Read more