CBIC instruct field officers to expedite the pending refund claims by April 30, 2020

The CBIC vide Instruction No. 2/1/2020 - GST dated April 09, 2020, which states that all pending GST refunds including IGST refunds shall be expeditiously processed. The decision to process the pending refund claims has been taken with a view to provide immediate relief to the taxpayers in these difficult times even though the GST Law provides 15 days for issuing acknowledgment or deficiency memo and total 60 days for disposing of the refund claims without any liability to pay interest, all pending refund applications must be taken up for processing immediately.

However, before granting the refunds on merits, considering all the relevant legal provisions and circulars,  all communication must be done using official email IDs. It may please be noted that the prescribed process doesn’t warrant any physical submission of documents and any such practice must be avoided. As far as the IGST Refunds of the exporters in whose case the / scrolls have been suspended base don instructions from DGARM, the extant procedure prescribed vide letter dated 23.01.2020 shall continue to be followed. Further, it is requested that daily monitoring of disposal of pending refund claims should be done by the Zonal Pr. Chief Commissioner/Chief Commissioners and efforts should be made to dispose of all the pending refund claims by April 30, 2020.