25th Amendment to the Goods and Services Tax Regulation Published

On 12 February 2020, the 25th Amendment to the Goods and Services Tax Regulation (Regulation Number 2011/R-43) was published in the Government Gazette.

The amendment repealed Section 12(d) of the GST Regulation which defined “date of commencement of import activity”, for the purpose of Section 51(g) of the GST Act, as the date a person is granted a permit to import goods by the relevant Government authority. Hence, with this amendment, the requirement to register for GST within 30 (thirty) days from the date you are issued with an ‘import license’ no longer exists. However, this should not be mistaken for the mandatory GST registration requirement imposed under Section 51(a)(4) of the GST Act on persons importing goods into the Maldives – the registration requirement remains the same.

In addition to the above, the amendment also revoked Section 15(f) of the Tax Ruling TR-2015/G23 (Documents to be submitted with GST return) which obliged registered person with an annual turnover of less than MVR 5 million to submit Input Tax Statements and Output Tax Statements to the MIRA through the MIRAconnect Portal; via email; or on a portable storage device starting from 1 January 2019. This means that taxpayers with an annual turnover of less than MVR 5 million can choose to file their tax returns over the counter.

The amendment takes effect from 12 February 2020.