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Late fee or penalty for nil service tax return ?

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Nupur Sharma

225 Points Posted on 16 June 2015

Hi All!

A client of mine works as a freelancer working for US based clients only. He is exempt from service tax under export of service rules, however he had taken up service tax registration and was e-filing ST returns as well. For last half year , he has not yet filed the service tax return , for which the due date was 25th April 2015. Now my query is whether he should be paying any interest or penalty as per the rules for delay in filing the return or not ? As per me, he should not as he has no service tax due and he is not even liable to file any returns. He was just filing NIL returns.

I came across this link where it is mentioned in the end that no late fee is to be deposited, but I am still not sure.

/articles/no-need-to-file-service-tax-return-if-no-service-tax-payable-18125.asp#.VX_kZ_mqqkp

Please help.

Replies (1)

Rashi Bajaj

477 Points Posted on 17 June 2015

Dear Nupur,

Late fee provisions are applicable to NIL returns also. However, powers are granted to Superintendant that can reduce/waive the amount of penalty in case of NIL returns but only on satisfaction of genuine reasons.