New Delhi, The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs on Friday said that since March 30, it has processed 12,923 refund applications involving claims worth Rs 5,575 crore to help the GST taxpayers in the present Covid-19 situation.

While in the last week itself, CBIC has processed 7,873 claims worth Rs 3,854 crore.

CBIC said that a trade and business friendly measure taken by it through a circular requiring taxpayers to give HSN/SAC code along with the refund application, is being misconstrued by as troubling the taxpayers in Covid-19 like situation.

It said the provision was approved by the GST Council to facilitate early ITC refunds and to ensure that the wrong ITC claims are not processed in the absence of relevant information.

"It had been brought to the notice of GSTC by various stakeholders including the taxpayers. It was noticed that a lot of time is spent in verification of whether the credit was availed on services and/or Capital Goods in certain categories for the refund claims," CBIC said in a statement.

CBIC said that in order to address the difficulty faced by trade in providing this data at the time of processing of claim leading to delays and increase in compliance cost, it was decided in the GST Council to make declaration of classification codes a part of the application itself.

The GST Council in the same meeting has also decided to allow bunching of tax periods across financial years to facilitate claim of refund by exporters. This would apply to applications filed after 31.03.2020. It may also be not ed that the due date of all such applications which were due during 20th Mar ch 2020 and 29th June 2020 has been extended to 30.06.2020.

The GST Law doesn't allow refund of credit availed on services and/or Capital Goods in certain categories. For example, Capital Goods ITC refund is not permissible for refund of ITC on account of exports and other zero-rated supplies. Further, ITC availed on services and capital goods are not allowed to be refunded in Inverted Structure Refund category.