As per a recent update, the imposed ban on deemed approval for new GST registration has been lifted by the Goods and Service Tax (GST) Department. The ban was imposed by the authority during the lockdown period due to fear that the registration facility can be misused when the department is not functioning properly. Several states had also reported that several newly registered businesses are involved in circular trading during the lockdown.
The GST Registration Process
In last week the GST policy wing issued an instruction and stated that “all registration applications as on June 30 that have remained pending till July 15 be granted deemed approval”. Application received after June 30 and pending till 28 will be deemed approved too.
The released instruction also stated that a few registration applications were approved due to the technical glitches in GST Network (GSTN)
During the lockdown, many business houses had experienced a long delay in getting their GST registration Confirmation and they are also not able to raise the issue with the authority. Most of these cases happened in April-May months. As per some sources, the commercial tax department of several states had found several cases of circular trading in which businesses are involved in issuing fake invoices between each other to avail input tax credit unethically. And they were doing that without actual supply of goods and services
The senior partner at AMRG & Associates, Rajat Mohan stated that “Tax authorities witnessed a sudden surge in GST registrations during the pandemic period, even though other economic indicators like e-way bills, tax collections, and GDP nosedived. Since lockdown is practically over in all states, the process for deemed approval of the application for registration would be resumed from August 1”.