GST officers have been given more time to issue demand notices for discrepancies in annual returns for 2018-19 and 2019-20 financial years.

On Thursday, the government extended the deadline in this regard for 2018-19 to April 30 and for 2019-20 to August 31.

A notification has been issued by the finance ministry in this regard.

Currently, the deadline is March 31, 2024 and June 30, 2024, for 2018-19 and 2019-20 financial years, respectively.

AMRG & Associates senior partner Rajat Mohan said the extension pertains to issuance of orders for the recovery of tax liabilities, whether due to non-payment, underpayment, or erroneous claim of input tax credit, for the financial years 2018-19 and 2019-20.

Previously, the government had revised these deadlines.

For the fiscal 2018-19, the deadline was extended to March 31, 2024 from the original deadline of December 31, 2023.

Similarly, for the fiscal year 2019-20, the deadline was pushed to June 30, 2024, from the initial deadline of March 31, 2023.

M&M penalty

Mahindra & Mahindra on Friday said it has been slapped with a penalty of Rs 4.12 crore over input tax credit claim and education cess credit balance carried forward from the pre-GST regime to the GST regime for its two-wheeler business.

In a regulatory filing, Mahindra & Mahindra said it has received an order from
the office of the Deputy Commissioner, State Tax, Audit Wing, Indore-01, Madhya Pradesh, imposing a penalty of Rs 4,11,50,120 for the two-wheeler business of Mahindra Two Wheelers Ltd (MTWL).

The business was demerged from MTWL and has since been merged with the company.

One of the reasons for imposing the penalty is that the “invoices based on which input tax credit has been claimed by MTWL were not reported by vendors in their GST returns and thus are not appearing in the auto populated GSTR-2A”.

Another reason is that the “carry forward of education cess credit balance (is) not allowed from pre-GST regime to GST regime”.

Based on its assessment, M&M said “an appeal will be filed and the company is hopeful of a favourable outcome at the appellate level and does not reasonably expect the said order to have any material financial impact on the company”.

PTI