GST Portal Upgraded: Starts Online Refund Processing

Shubham Chauhan

04 Nov, 2019

In order to create a flawless experience for both taxpayers and tax officers, a new online refund process on the GST Portal has been started by the GST council.

With the implementation of online refund functionality, taxpayers will now be able to file refund application effortlessly and tax authorities can process the same online, this is what GST network said. The online refund process has been effective on GST portal from September 25, 2019.

Also Read: GST in India: Comparison with other Countries

Earlier one tax authority used to be responsible for refund processing for both Central and State GST, but the payment was done separately by the accounting authorities of tax departments. This was leading to a delay on account of sharing of sanction order with the counterparty accounting authority through that tax authority.

The new system has minimized the delay which used to happen earlier and after the processing is completed by the tax officer, the sanctioned amount will get credited to the bank account of the Taxpayer through Public Financial Management System (PFMS).

Taxpayers now will be provided with information at all the important stages of processing of their refund application through SMS and Email, he said. Further he added that the payment of amount will now be done from one disbursement authority i.e. PFMS unlike the earlier method where sanction was done by one authority but payment was made by two different authorities separately.

For now, all refund applications which were filed before 26^th September, 2019 will be processed manually as used to be done under old refund process.