The GST Network (GSTN) has incorporated an online GST refund process, as decided by the 37th GST Council. With this utility, taxpayers will easily be able to file for a refund via form RFD 01, which can further be processed online by the GST officers. The online refund system has been put into effect from September 25, 2019, on the GST portal.
Key Points:
- Taxpayers can now file refund application (in RFD 01 form) easily and tax officers can process the same online
- All communications between taxpayers and tax officers will also be online
GST Refund Process of Yester Years
Until now, the refund processing for the Central GST (CGST) and State GST (SGST) was done by a single tax authority to whom the taxpayer was assigned administratively. However, the disbursement for the same was done by separate accounting authorities of central and state tax departments respectively. This lead to a delay of sharing sanction order between accounting authorities, before the GST refund could be processed to the applicant.
GSTN Refund Process 2019
The new GST refund system launched by GSTN has done away with multiple accounting authorities for sanctioning the disbursement of the refund amount. Under the new refund system, once the tax officer completes processing, the sanctioned amount will get credited to the bank account of the Taxpayer through Public Fund Management System (PFMS). The new system is being incorporated to provide a boost to the disbursement speed of refunds and further improve the GST compliance, thereby making refund a seamless experience for the taxpayer as well as the tax officer.
However, it may be noted that all refund applications filed before September 26, 2019, will be processed manually as done under the old refund process.
Features of the New GST Refund System
The key features of the new refund system launched by GSTN are as follows:
- Single Authority based refund system
- Stage-by-Stage tracking of the GST Refund process
- SMS and Email Updates for Important stages
- Online Reply Utility for Notices
Digitisation making GST Refund Process Simpler in the days to come
Post-April 2020, with the enrolment of new GST returns, the taxpayer will be able to auto-populate the GST refund details from his sales records. These auto-populated fields shall be derived from taxpayers ‘refund from sales to SEZ and Deemed Exports’ and ‘refund from sales to B2B, Exports and B2C’ records.
If the field for a refund from sales to SEZ and Deemed Exports is populated indicated ‘Yes’, the supplier shall get the refund from such transactions else SEZ/Deemed Exporter.
Similarly, in case of transactions other than SEZ and Deemed Exports, if the document to be auto-populated to GST refunds is Yes then values will be auto-populated in refund form.
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