CBIC Releases the Guidelines for Sanction, Post-Audit, and Review of GST Refund Claims

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has released the detailed notifications; stating the instructions for sanction, post-audit, and review of refund claims. Releasing the notifications, CBIC has brought the instructions in a view of noticing the different practices being performed by the field officers. The board has reviewed the current status and found discrepancies in refund claims cases. Elaborating further, CBIC has said that in some cases speaking orders are being issued while in others, they are not being issued. Similarly, the field officers were following the different practices in the case of review and post-audit.

Considering all these discrepancies, the board has issued clear instructions ensuring uniformity in the whole process of monitoring the sanction, post-audit, and review of refund claims. The Board clarified that the field officer must upload a detailed speaking order containing the details of the category of refund and others while passing a refund sanction order in Form GST RFD-06.

The board clarifies that offices must review all refund orders to examine their legality and propriety before performing a post-audit. The review should also decide whether an application could go for an appeal to the appellate authority under section 102 (2) of the GST Act or not.

The board is instructed to undertake post-audit refund orders offline until the online functionality is developed on the ACES GST portal. Also, the concerned division should provide the refund orders and the relevant documents to the post-audit cell through the e-office within seven days of releasing the refund sanction order.