The GST Network (GSTN) has introduced an online GST refund process, as decided by the 37th GST Council. With this process, taxpayers will easily be able to file refund through form RFD 01, which can further be processed online by the GST officers. The online refund system is into effect from September 25, 2019, on the GST portal.
Major Points:
- Taxpayers can now file refund application (in RFD 01 form) easily and tax officers can execute it online
- All communications between taxpayers and tax officers will be online as well
GST Refund Process Of Previous Years
Till now, the refund processing for the Central GST (CGST) and State GST (SGST) was done by a single tax personal to whom the taxpayer was assigned administratively. However, the disbursement for this was done by different accounting authorities of central and state tax departments respectively. This makes a delay of sharing sanction order between accounting personals, before the GST refund could be processed to the applicant.
GSTN Refund Process 2019
The new GST refund system launched by GSTN has done away with multiple accounting authorities for sanctioning the disbursement of the refund amount. Under new refund system, when the tax officer completes processing, the sanctioned amount will get credited to the bank account of the Taxpayer through Public Fund Management System (PFMS). The new system is being introduced to provide a boost to the disbursement speed of refunds and also improve the GST compliance, hence making refund a seamless experience for the taxpayer as well as the tax officer.
However, it may be noted that all refund applications filed before September 26, 2019, will be processed manually as done under the old refund process.
Features Of The New GST Refund System
The unique features of the new refund system launched by GSTN are as below:
- Single Authority based refund system
- Stage-by-Stage tracking of the GST Refund process
- SMS and Email Updates for Important stages
- Online Reply Utility for Notices
Digitization Making GST Refund Process Simpler In The Coming Days
After-April 2020, with the enrolment of new GST returns, the taxpayer will be able to auto-populate the GST refund details from his sales records. These auto-populated fields will be derived from taxpayers ‘refund from sales to SEZ and Deemed Exports’ and ‘refund from sales to B2B, Exports and B2C’ records.
If the field for a refund from sales to SEZ and Deemed Exports is populated indicated ‘Yes’, the supplier will get the refund from such transactions else SEZ/Deemed Exporter.
Similarly, in case of transactions other than SEZ and Deemed Exports, if the document to be auto-populated to GST refunds is Yes then values will be auto-populated in refund form.
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