In a major relief to the businesses, the Government may able them to rectify the GST Returns for the non-technical errors.
Recently, the GST Council has directed a committee for IT grievance redressal to quickly draw up a solution that will give relief to the industry.
This is in the light of increasing rate of litigations before High Courts for pending of Thousands of crores of tax credit due to errors in the filing of returns.
Earlier, the Government had allowed the rectification of errors in the returns due to technical glitches in the GST site. The move will be a reprieve for businesses that had lost credit due to minor, non-technical errors.
“The council has approved changes in cases where the error is not IT related,” a government official aware of deliberations told ET. It was felt that in some areas where errors are apparent or high courts have issued directions, those should be settled, he said.
A standard operating procedure will be developed by the grievance committee for all the cases where high courts have given a direction, the amount has been wrongly entered or the concerned jurisdictional commissioner has made a recommendation. The forms TRAN1 and TRAN2, specified for claiming past credits, can now be amended to allow for this.
The GST law does not provide for any appeal on issues related to TRAN1 or TRAN2. This lacuna in the law lead to litigations and therefore, the GST Council is now considering the amendment in the laws.
“Lot of companies could not claim the entire eligible opening credit under TRAN1 due to inadvertent errors,” said Pratik Jain, national indirect taxes leader, PwC. “This move will help them to claim the additional amount, without going to courts, which some of them have already opted for.”
The GST Council had allowed a liberal scheme for claiming credit in lieu of taxes paid under the previous regime against GST liabilities. Businesses could claim credit even if they did not have proof of payment under the deemed benefit provision. However, large transition credit claims, which pulled down overall GST collections, made authorities wary, leading to the increased vigil. Any changes to the TRAN1 were thus not allowed on non-IT related issues.
