Work from home is bringing with itself unique challenges, as corporate executives designated to file returns, generate e-way bills and conduct other confidential business are unable to access their office ERP systems. The lack of access is leading to a situation where compliance delays and allied penalties could crop up.
While corporates are encouraging work from home in order to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus outbreak, absence of certain tax applications and secure technologies
such as digital signature certificate, are some of the issues coming to fore while undertaking compliance, said industry executives and sector experts.
This at a time when the government has changed norms for tax return filing and even introduced staggered return filing systems to ease up the load on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Network. However, in case of delays in return filing, the GST payments also get delayed, which then lead to interest being levied on payments.
Getting data collated to complete the compliance formalities will itself pose another challenge. Sudden change in work flow will also test existing systems that companies have in place. For filing monthly GST returns, data on entire sale and purchase, input credit data, sale returns, export data, stock transfer data and other details are required to be compiled.
Officials said that while some industry associations representing restaurants, travel agencies, airlines and others in the service sector have sought for extension in the time limits for filing returns and for paying GST, but the government is yet to take to call on the matter.