The Centre on Saturday waived the late payment penalty for those who failed to filed the first Goods and Services Tax returns for the month of July. However, the government said the interest on the late payment of dues will be levied on the taxpayers.

The last date to file GST returns in Form 3B for businesses was August 25. The Central Board of Excise and Customs said the interest will be levied on the taxpayers “from August 26, till the date of debit in the electronic cash and/or credit ledger, but will not be liable to pay any late fee”.

Earlier, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that taxpayers who had failed to meet the deadline will have to bear a penalty of Rs 100 each for Central GST and State GST.

On August 29, Jaitley had said that taxes worth Rs 92,283 crore were collected in July, surpassing the target of Rs 91,000 crore. About Rs 14,894 crore had come in as Central GST, Rs 22,722 crore as State GST and Rs 47,469 crore as Integrated GST, he had said.