The government has clarified that the individuals and businesses will not have to pay any penalty for the delay in filing GST returns for August and September.
The announcement was made by finance minister Arun Jaitley via a tweet. The tweet said, “To facilitate taxpayers, late fee on filing of GSTR-3B for August and September has been waived,”
He also said that the late fee, which has already been charged by the online GST system, will be credited back to the bank accounts of the individuals and businesses. Earlier, he had also announced waiving off the late fee for the filing of July returns. July was the first month after the implementation of GST. Off late, businesses and individual businessmen were demanding that the late fee for filing 3B GST returns should be waived off.
According to publicly available data, the GST portal saw 55.87 returns filed for the month of July, 51.37 lakh returns for August and 42 lakh returns for the month of September. The monthly return for each month is supposed to be filed on 20th of the next month. Before this, the businesses need to pay the due taxes.
For July and August, 33.98 and 28.46 returns were filed before the due date respectively. The number has grown to be 55.87 lakh and 51.37 lakh respectively. The GST law has recommended a penalty of INR 100 per day for both (CGST and SGST) in case of failing to submit returns and paying taxes by the due date.