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The Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs (CBIC) has notified vide instruction no.CBEC-20/06/11/2020-GST dated 17th July 2020 to dispose of all pending applications of Registration on or before 30th July 2020 as a "special drive". Sub-Section 10 of Section 25 of CGST Act, 2017 read with Rule 9 of CGST Rules, 2017 provides that Application of Registration shall be deemed as approved after a period of three working days if the proper officer fails to take any action on the said application within the said period of three working days. Strong apprehensions were raised on the possible misuse of the deeming provision during the COVID lockdown period, where either the central/state tax offices were closed or were functioning with skeletal staff. Since lockdown applied across all establishments including those belonging to the Governments (Central and State), during the lockdown period there being no "working days", it had been decided that the approval of the ap

The 40th GST Council met under the Chairmanship of Union Finance & Corporate Affairs Minister Smt Nirmala Sitharaman through video conferencing on12th June 2020. This was the first GST Council meet after the successive lockdowns due to Covid-19 pandemic. The following recommendations were made related to changes in Law & Procedure: 1. Reduction of Late Fees for Past Returns As a measure to clean up pendency in return filing, late fees for non-furnishing FORM GSTR-3B for the tax period from July 2017 to January 2020 has been reduced/waived as under:  a)'NIL’ late fee if there is no tax liability. b)Maximum late fee capped at Rs. 500/- per return if there is any tax liability. The Reduced Late Fees would apply for all the GSTR-3B returns furnished between 1 July 2017 to 30 September 2020. 2. Further relief for small taxpayers for late filing of returns for February, March & April 2020 Tax periods: For small taxpayers (aggregate turnover up to Rs.5 Crores), for the supplie