A request has been presented before Union Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman by the Gujarat Chamber of Commerce & Industry (GCCI) to dismiss the interest and penalty for Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) levied under notification No. 54/2018 dated October 9, 2018.
The GCCI stated that the representations received are from its different member units. They state that they have summons along with interest and penalties concerning the IGST payable following the notification. These businesses imported materials through an advanced licence. However, since the IGST was not recorded in the Bill of Exchange (BOE), they missed paying it after the consignment was cleared.
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Pathik Patwari, president of the Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry said “Many units in Gujarat were not in knowledge about the new notification released by the GST Council, which stated that IGST needed to be paid during clearance of the consignment and then claimed as a refund through Input Tax Credit (ITC), or a Letter of Undertaking (LUT) was required to be submitted for not paying the IGST,”.
They consequently cleared their shipments devoid of paying IGST because they believed it did not apply and that no LUT had been submitted. Additionally, the consignments were discharged by the Customs Department without the LUT or IGST payments.
The GCCI made it clear saying that the units in consideration did not plan to intentionally ignore the tax payment, but this was just an accidental mistake by them. Additionally, because of this transaction, there was not any revenue loss detected by the GST Department. According to the revised notification, the units would have paid IGST upfront and later claimed a refund via ITC, leading to the same results in terms of revenue collection for the GST Department.
However, because of the accumulated interest and penalty, several units failed to pay the pending tax amount. This may have unfavourable financial outcomes for these units because most of them are MSMEs, it said.
