Minimum Wages

The Ministry of Labour and Employment in the Govt. of India has vide its notification dated 29th January, 2019 amended Rule 21(4A)  of the Minimum Wages (Central) Rules, 1950.

The new Rule 21(4A) reads as follows:

4A.- Every employer shall, on or before the 1st day of February in each year, upload unified annual return in Form III on the web portal of the Central Government in the Ministry of Labour and Employment giving information as to the particulars specified in respect of the preceding year: 

Provided that during inspection, the inspector may require the production of accounts, books, registers and other documents maintained in electronic form or otherwise."

What is unified annual return is not specified or defined anywhere, but the Labour Ministry has carried out similar amendments to 7 legislations.

It is not also clear from when it is effective, because the notification is dated 29th January, 2019 and it requires the establishment to file a return on or before 1st February every year. So it would be practically impossible to collate all the information and file the return in just one day!!!

annual return

MCA has vide the Companies Ordinance 2019 which has been gazetted on 12th January, 2019 amended section 92 as follows:

Section 92 pertains to annual return to be filed by every company in India. This is one of the two mandatory annual filings to be done by every company in India. It is required to be filed within 60 days from the date of the annual general meeting or where no AGM is held, within 60 days from the last date on which AGM should have been held. It contains details of the Directors, shareholders, debt, managerial remuneration, share transfers, board meetings, general meetings, etc.

Section 92(5) is the penalty section, which has been modified. The amended section 92(5) states as follows:

"If a company fails to file its annual return under sub-section (4) before the expiry of the period specified therein, such company and its every officer who is in default shall be liable to penalty of Rs.50,000/- and in case of continuing failure, with a further penalty of Rs.100 per day during which the failure continues, subject to maximum of Rs.500,000/-."

What has changed is that earlier the company was subject to a penalty of not less than Rs.50,000/- but which may extend to Rs.500,000/- and every officer of the company who is in default shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 6 months OR fine of Rs.50,000/- which may extend to Rs.5000,000/- or with both.

So the imprisonment has been removed and penalty for both the company and officer in default has been made common i.e. Rs.50,000/-. Penalty for continuing failure has been added, which was not there hitherto.

GSTR3B -waiver of late fee

The Central Government has vide a notification click here waived the late fee on delayed filing of form GSTR3B. Any amount of late fee which is in excess of Rs.25/- per day is waived. Similarly where the tax payable is NIL and still the registered person has to file the return, any excess late fee over Rs.10 per day is waived off. This is applicable for all GSTR3B returns from July, 2017 onwards i.e. from the inception of GST system.

So here it is only a partial waiver. But where the registered person has failed to furnish the return for the periods July 2017 to September, 2018 but has subsequently filed the same between 22nd December, 2018 and 31st March, 2019, the entire late fee is waived off.

This sounds ridiculous unless I am missing some thing here. That means if you have not filed at all but are filing now between those above dates, then you get full waiver, otherwise only partial waiver.

This begs a major question - why the hell did the government deem it so bloody important to levy a late fee and penalty in the first place if they have to go back and waive it from retrospective effect. Sounds like poor governance from the government.

GST annual return

The Ministry of Finance vide its notification dated 11th December, 2018 has extended the last date for filing of the annual return of GST for the period from 1st July, 2017 to 31st March, 2018 to 31st March, 2019. The annual return is required to be filed online, but the system is not yet ready at their end, so the extension.

Every registered person,  a casual taxable person and a non resident taxable person is required to file this annual return electronically.

The form for the annual return is not ready, so one does not know the contours of this return. Already taxpayers are burdened with two returns GSTR3B and GSTR1. The latter could be quarterly for taxpayers who have less than Rs.1.5 crore turnover and they have to opt for quarterly method of filing.

One does not know what is the reason for one more return under the GST regime. It does not help in "ease of doing business"