Dear Professional Colleagues,

Greetings of the Day !

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs had issued Circular No. 188/20/2022-GSTdated December 27, 2022, regarding prescribing manner of filing an application for refund by unregistered persons. 

Background/ Issues

• Where unregistered buyers, who had entered into an agreement/ contract with a builder for supply of services of construction of flats/ building, etc., and had paid the amount towards consideration for such service, either fully or partially, along with applicable tax, had to get the said contract/ agreement cancelled subsequently due to non-completion or delay in construction activity in time or any other reasons.
• Similar situation may arise in cases of long-term insurance policies where premium for the entire period of term of policy is paid upfront along with applicable GST and the policy is subsequently required to be terminated prematurely due to some reasons.

In a number of such cases, the period for issuance of credit notes may already have got expired by that time. Thereby it leads to payment of taxes on services that have not been provided at all.

Provisions

• Section 54(1) of the CGST Act already provides that any person can claim refund of any tax and interest, if any, paid on such tax or any other amount paid by him, by making an application before the expiry of two years from the relevant date in such form and manner as may be prescribed.

Solution

• In order to enable such unregistered person to file application for refund under subsection (1) of section 54, in cases where the contract/agreement for supply of services of construction of flat/ building has been cancelled or where long-term insurance policy has been terminated, a new functionality has been made available on the common portal which allows unregistered persons to take a temporary registration and apply for refund under the category ‘Refund for Unregistered person’.

Procedure

• An unregistered person, shall obtain a temporary registration on the common portal using his Permanent Account Number (PAN).
• The application for refund shall be filed in FORM GST RFD-01 on the common portal under the category ‘Refund for unregistered person’. The applicant shall upload statement 8 (in pdf format) and all the requisite documents.
• Further, the applicant shall also upload the certificate issued by the supplier in terms of clause (kb) of sub-rule (2) of rule 89 of the CGST Rules along with the refund application. The applicant shall also upload any other document(s) to support his claim that he has paid and borne the incidence of tax and that the said amount is refundable to him. 
• 3 Separate applications for refund have to be filed in respect of invoices issued by different suppliers. Further, where the suppliers, in respect of whose invoices refund is to be claimed, are registered in different States/UTs, the applicant shall obtain temporary registration in the each of the concerned States/UTs where the said supplier is registered.  
• Accordingly, the refund claim can be filed by the unregistered persons only in those cases where at the time of cancellation/termination of agreement/contract for supply of services, the time period for issuance of credit note under section 34 of the CGST Act has already expired.