New Delhi: A single authority for sanctioning and processing Goods and Services Tax (GST) refunds is in the offing as the Finance Ministry looks to speed up and simplify the process for exporters, an official said. The current mechanism entails a twin refund sanctioning authority of the central and state tax officers but that could well change by August when the proposed new structure involving a single authority comes in place. As per the system being worked out by the Revenue Department, the taxpayer will get full refund from his jurisdictional officer once the claim is sanctioned, while at the back-end the Centre and states will apportion the amount to be paid to each other.
Under the proposed ‘single authority mechanism’, once a refund claim is filed with a tax officer, whether Centre or state, the officer will check, assess and sanction full tax refund (both Central GST and State GST portion), thereby removing difficulties faced by the taxpayers. This will later get adjusted/settled amongst the two tax authorities through internal account adjustments.
Currently, the two authorities settling the same refund claims adds to unnecessary complexities and inconvenience for the taxpayers. It has been seen that even after sanction/payment of refund by concerned jurisdictional tax officer, the counterpart tax authority at times tends to delay the GST refu
