During the Covid situation government had provided a relief that no late fees shall be charged if the returns are filed before the extended due dates.
You can read the extended due dates HERE.
The due date for tax payers with turnover above Rs. 5 crore was 24.06.2020 and for tax payer below Rs. 5 crore is 30.06.2020.
Now, many people were having the confusion that whether the turnover of Rs. 5 crores needs to be seen GST registration wise or PAN wise and the answer to same is that this turnover will be seen PAN wise.
Secondly many people were under the belief that with such extension of due date their late fees till this date shall be waived. However that’s not true because the waiver of late fee in the notification of CBIC was a conditional waiver that if a person filed his return till the extended due date late fee shall be waived.
Thus, if the return is not filed till the extended due date late fees shall be charged from the original due date.
Hence, if a person with turnover above Rs. 5 crore filed his GSTR 3B for the month of February 2020 on 25.06.2020 and which is not a Nil return he will have to pay late fees of Rs. 4,850 i.e. Rs. 50 late fees per day for 97 days [in case of Nil return amount shall be Rs. 20 per day] and this is just for one month and you need to pay this for each month. Same shall be applicable for tax payers with less than Rs. 5 crore turnover.
Therefore, the late fees charged will be a huge amount for many tax payers who were of the belief that their late fees has been waived unconditional till the new due dates. It’s better to file your GST return as soon as possible to save yourself from such huge amount of late fees.
However, many bodies have made representation to CBIC to further waive the late fees as many of the areas in India are still under lockdown and hence they are not able to file their return or access their documents. Let’s see if government provides further relief.
Do remember that once you pay late fees no refund shall be provided even if relief is announced so do think before filing return with late fees as from the past we can see that government is helping non compliant to become compliant and no relief is being provided to already law compliant people.
