Shipping Bill as per Notification No. 60 /2017-Customs (N.T.) dated 29th June, 2017

Circular No 26/2017-Cus dated 01.07.2017 provides that the exporter may supply goods or services or both, subject to such conditions, safeguards and procedure as may be prescribed, on payment of integrated tax and claim refund of such tax paid on goods or services or both supplied, in accordance with the provisions of section 54 (Refunds) of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act or the rules made there under (i.e. the Central Goods and Service Tax Rules, 2017).

Further, Para 5 of the circular ibid stipulates that the procedure for refund is that a registered person shall not be required to file any application for refund of integrated goods and services tax paid on supply of goods for exports. The shipping bill, having inter-alia GST invoice details, filed by an exporter shall be deemed to be an application for refund of integrated tax paid on the goods exported out of India and such application shall be deemed to have been filed only when the person in charge of the conveyance carrying the export goods duly files an export manifest or an export report covering the number and the date of shipping bills or bills of export and the applicant has furnished a valid return in FORM GSTR-3. The details of the relevant export invoices contained in FORM GSTR-1 shall be transmitted electronically by the common portal to the Customs system and the said system shall in turn electronically transmit back to the common portal a confirmation that the goods covered by the said invoices have been exported out of India. Upon receipt of information regarding furnishing of valid return in FORM GSTR-3 from the common portal, the Customs system shall process the claim for refund and an amount equal to the integrated tax paid in respect of each shipping bill or bill of export shall be electronically credited to the bank account of the applicant mentioned in his registration particulars. Government has allowed a grace period to the registrants to file returns under the new GST Law. Therefore, this refund procedure shall as a consequence come into operation only when the registrants file the above mentioned returns. Further, the exporters are free to avail option (a) or option (b). The refund shall be governed by the provisions of the section 16 of the IGST Act.

In line with what is stated above,  a new format of Shipping Bill was notified by the Government of India vide Notification No. 60 /2017-Customs (N.T.) dated 29th June, 2017 to capture the information required under the CGST Act 2017 and Rules made thereunder to grant refund. As per new format of Shipping Bill, exporters are required to provide details of Export / commercial invoice Number and date as well as details of GST tax invoice issued under the CGST Rules 2017.

Now during the month of July- Aug 2017, exporters are exporting their products on payment of IGST under claim for refund / without payment of IGST but they are facing problems in putting details of GST Tax Invoice in INR and Export Invoice in foreign currency at the time of filing of shipping bills. It has also been noticed that the Shipping Bills generated by EDI is not in the same format as notified by the Notification No. 60 /2017-Customs (N.T.) dated 29th June, 2017. It means that there may be some difficulties in sharing of informations from Customs to GSTN for verification, consequently refund of IGST may be delayed. Hope the authorities will do something to help exporters in order to get their refunds timely without any problem.