The excitement of the state tax department to touch tax defaulters in the beginning phase has just sunk as a franchise owner wrongly received a notice mentioning to furnish his tax returns for the 2nd half of 2018.
The Maharashtra GST department has informed a business enterprise in Pune via a notice to furnish the tax return for July to November 2018 period. The notice from the department has made the owner entangled.
About fifteen days ago, the owner got the notice from state government officials via email saying that the owner had not furnished tax for the upper mentioned period. The owner suddenly verified the details of account along with a chartered accountant and acknowledged that no return was in line to file for mentioned and another period in 2017.
The owner said, “We were sure that we had filed all our previous returns on time but certainly this notice has put us in a fix and we had to thoroughly recheck all our tax records for the past years. We were relieved when we were sure that nothing was pending till date.”
Further on the issue, the state tax officer accepted that it was a ‘clerical error’ from department’s side. The tax officer, DG Shewale said, “I have checked our records and we admit that there is a mistake on our part and we have apologized to the customer for it. The notice was supposed to be for the year 2017 for the same period. We have written him an email correcting our error and also apologizing for the same.”
He added that the department will keep this in mind in future to not inform any wrong person by such notice.
He further said, “We will ensure that this kind of blunder does not occur again and for that, I will pull up my staff and ask them to ensure error-free functioning,”
On questioning the reason upon the person has got a notice after filing the returns, tax officials said that the list was received by the central government and the notice does not direct in the term that the person is a defaulter.
Shewale said, “The notice clearly states in the fourth point that ‘The notice shall be deemed to have been withdrawn in case the return referred above is filed by you before the issue of the assessment order’. This means that the person receiving it must ignore it if he or she has filed the return before the receipt of the notice.”
The owner said that he has received the apology letter from the tax department by January 31, 2018.
