An Amnesty Scheme has been launched by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs for taxpayers who failed to file their appeals on time or who had their appeals denied. Taxpayers must file their appeals by January 31, 2024, and the program is applicable to appeals against demand orders issued on or before March 31, 2023. In order to take part, taxpayers must debit at least 20% of the contested tax amount from the Electronic Cash Ledger and submit a pre-deposit of 12.5% of the total disputed tax amount. Tax liability-related appeals are not covered by the program.
The GST Council made the recommendation to create an amnesty program during its 52nd meeting for organizations that were either unable to file an appeal against GST demand orders by March 31st or whose appeal was denied only for failing to file it within the allotted three-month period.
As per the announcement, taxpayers can now file an appeal with a pre-deposit of 12.5% instead of the present 10%.
Many taxpayers who previously were unable to file an appeal within the allotted time frame will benefit from this.
The amnesty program achieves a balance between providing relief to taxpayers and upholding the integrity of tax collections by permitting appeals against jurisdictional orders that were missed to be submitted because of administrative or technical errors while demanding a tax demand. The burden of litigation may be lessened with this strategy, which will benefit tax authorities and taxpayers alike.
The notice’s benefit can only be obtained by depositing an extra 2.5% of the contested tax amount, as opposed to the original 10%, which “would impact taxpayers’ working capital.
The finance ministry reported to the Lok Sabha in March that over Rs 1 trillion had been collected from the entire amount of GST evasion found between July 2017 and February 2023.
According to the finance ministry, overall GST evasion totaling Rs. 1.4 trillion (including phony input tax credits) has been found so far in FY24, and voluntary payments totaling Rs. 14,108 crore have been paid for the same.