CBIC on Twitter on 26.06.2020
As part of COVID relief package announced in March 2020, a conditional waiver of late fee had been provided for all the taxpayers.
Accordingly, for taxpayers having turnover more than Rs. 5 Cr., late fee waiver on GSTR 3B returns for the tax period February, March and April, 2020 was subject to the condition that the return is filed by 24th June, 2020.
The legal “due date” remained the same, i.e. 20th day of the succeeding month (ex. for Feb 2020, it was 20th March 2020). It had been explicitly clarified to the trade that the waiver of late fee is conditional to filing the return of the said tax period by the due date.
As such if such a taxpayer has filed his return for Feb 2020 on 25th June, he would need to pay late fee from 21st March onwards. This was prescribed to encourage people to file returns by 24th June 2020 and balance their interest with those who do not file by the said date.
In other words, a blanket exemption of late fee would have been unfair to those taxpayers who filed returns before 24th June.
Source- https://twitter.com/cbic_india/status/1276537652271964160
