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The Andhra Pradesh High Court has ruled that the GST Return (GSTR) Form — GSTR-3B — is a statement and a revision option should be provided. Once implemented at the national level, it will be a big relief for a large number of GST assessees — excluding those under composition scheme.
As on June 30, there are more than 1.39 crore GST assessees, of which over 17.60 lakh are those who have opted for the composition scheme.
The composition scheme is applicable for those whose annual turnover is up to ₹1.5 crore and ₹75 lakh in States of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Tripura and Uttarakhand and need to pay tax equal to 1 per cent to 5 per cent of the turnover.
All taxpayers, except those registered under the composition scheme, are required to file GSTR-3B and pay tax on a monthly basis. These have to be filed by the 20th day of the following month. Even assessees with ‘NIL’ returns are required to file GSTR-3B. As of now, there is no provision for revision, making things complicated for assessees.
The petitioner, a Vijayawada-based firm Panduranga Stone Crushers, approached the High Court with a plea to permit it to manually rectify GSTR-3B statements for four months — August and December, 2017 and January- February, 2018. It submitted GSTR-3B for the month of July 2017 to March 2018. However, according to the petitioner, while claiming IGST (Integrated Goods and Services Tax, levied on inter-States trade), it inadvertently and by mistake reported IGST input tax credit in a column related to goods and services.
The petitioner contended that since there is no provision in Section 39 (relating to Furnishing of Returns) of the GST Act 2017 or relevant rules, he is entitled to rectify the mistake. However, the Government counsel argued that the provision covers the present contingency because even according to the petitioner’s own showing, there is mention of incorrect particulars and hence, the petitioner has an opportunity under the proviso to rectify the omission but it was not availed earlier. Hence, the petitioner should not be given any relief, argued the Government’s counsel.
Counsel for the petitioner quoted orders of Gujarat High Court and Kerala High Court. The Gujarat High Court struck down the condition which said that last date for availing input tax credit relating to the invoices issued during the period July 2017 to March 2018 is the last date for the filing of the returns in GSTR-3B. Similarly, the Kerala High Court permitted the request of transfer of tax liability from the head ‘SGST’ (State Goods and Services Tax) to ‘IGST’ notwithstanding the contentions of the revenue.
After hearing the arguments from both the sides, the Court permitted the petitioner to rectify GSTR-3B statements for the sought period.
Litigation galore
According to Rajat Mohan, Senior Partner with AMRG Associates, GST is in nascent stages and litigation in the same was anticipated, but a plethora of court rulings harming the basic edifice of GST indicate the haste in which these legislations were conceived and formalised. “The Andhra Pradesh High court granting manual rectification of GSTR -3B statements as an interim relief, would give enough material for other taxpayers to follow the trend and drag the tax office to courts,” he said.
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