From 23rd March 2022, the facility for ‘Restoration of cancelled Registration’ has gone live on the GST portal. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) implements this facility for taxpayers whose registrations are suo moto cancelled by the officers, including those voluntarily withdrawn by themselves. In many cases, the period for revoking such cancellation in Form REG-21 had expired but required restoration on genuine grounds.
The new functionality is expected to relieve taxpayers from the unnecessary hassles of saving their GSTINs for return defaults, especially during the pandemic. The CBIC issued a circular to its tax officials asking the respective jurisdictional range officers to restore the GST registrations concerning the appellate or judicial orders.
Taxpayers must file Form REG-21 to revoke the cancelled GST Identification Number (GSTIN) within 30 days from the date of its cancellation. The time limit has been conditionally extended in genuine cases up to 90 days.
During the pandemic, many tax officials had issued suo moto notices for cancelling the GST registrations of non-compliant taxpayers. The appellate authority took up the matter and, in many cases, have directed the range officers to restore such cancellations.
High Courts in Calcutta, Orissa, Patna and Gujarat had issued rulings that GST registration cannot be cancelled if taxpayers could not carry out businesses operations from the place of business reported to the GST authority on account of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such courts issued particular directions to the CBIC to identify and restore GST registrations in similar cases.
The functionality deployment in the front-end of the GST portal got delayed. With the CBIC already announcing the facility, it necessitated a temporary set-up on the GST portal at the back-end.
Wipro has taken charge of software development and maintenance for this functionality. They must promptly handle processing errors and other technical issues while trying to close any problems within 30 days’ notice.
For any clarifications/feedback on the topic, please get in touch with the writer at annapoorna.m@cleartax.in
Annapoorna, popularly known as Anna, is an aspiring Chartered Accountant with a flair for GST. She spends most of her day Singing hymns to the tune of jee-es-tee! Well, not most of her day, just now and then.
