Board has been receiving reports of different practices being followed by the field formations regarding sanction, review and post audit of refund claim. In certain commissionerates, speaking order is being issued in respect of all refund claims, whereas in others, speaking orders are not being issued if refund is sanction in full.

Accordingly, the board issued the following instructions/guidelines for sanction, post-audit and review of refunds. 

Key take away

• While passing the refund sanction order in FORM GST RFD-06, the proper officer should also upload a detailed speaking order along with refund sanction order in FORM GST RFD-06. 
• As per extant practice, all refund orders are required to be reviewed for examination of legality and propriety of the refund order and for taking a view whether an appeal to the appellate authority under provisions of sub-section (2) of section 107 of the CGST Act is required to be filed against the said refund order. 
• As already mentioned in Circular No. 17/1 7/20 17-GST dated 15.1 1.2017, refund claims shall not be subjected to pre-audit. However, the post-audit of refund claims may continue. Considering the large number of refund claims filed in GST, it has been decided that post-audit may henceforth be conducted only for refund claims amounting to Rs. 1 Lakh or more till further instructions.
• Till the time the functionality for conducting post-audit online is developed on ACES-GST portal, post-audit of refund orders may be conducted in offline mode. For the said purpose, the refund orders and the relevant documents may be provided to the post-audit cell by the concerned Division through e-Office within 7 days of issuance of refund sanction order in FORM GST RFD-06. The report of the post audit may be furnished by the Post-Audit Cell to the Review Cell through e-Office as per the time-limit specified.