Hoping to speed up pending refunds of exporters and traders who are facing problems of blocked working capital under the Goods and Services Tax, the Finance Ministry has now allowed manual filing of such claims.
“Due to the non-availability of the refund module on the common portal, it has been decided … that the applications, documents and forms pertaining to refund claims on account of inverted duty structure, deemed exports and excess balance in electronic cash ledger shall be filed and processed manually till further orders,” said the Central Board of Excise and Customs in a recent circular.
The decision, taken on the recommendation of the GST Council is a significant break given that all filings under GST were expected to be done electronically on the online portal of the GST Network.
The relaxation has now been given as five months after the roll out of GST, exporters and manufacturers continue to face delays in receiving refunds that has now begun to impact their business operations.
The refund claims will have to be filed on a monthly basis by taxpayers. However, those assessees who have joined the composition scheme and will file returns on a quarterly basis, can seek refunds on a quarterly basis, the CBEC said.
Refunds would be sanctioned by the respective Central or State GST authority and would be cleared within seven working days. To facilitate sanction of refund amount, the Central and State Tax authorities will also nominate nodal officers for liasioning.
Deadline extended
Meanwhile, the CBEC has also extended the deadline for filing returns for input tax credit (ITC 01), non-resident taxable persons (GSTR 5) and person supplying OIDAR services from abroad to non-taxable online recipients in India (GSTR 5A).
The deadline for filing ITC 01 for declaring input tax credit on inputs in stock and WIP, capital goods for specified persons for the period July to November is now January 31, 2018.
The due date for filing GSTR 5 and GSTR 5A for the time period July to December has also been extended to January 31, 2018.

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