I got a notification in 2020 (for Service Tax) asking to provide the FIRCs for the earnings made in FY 2015-16. At that time, elance was active until Oct 2015 and elance used Western Union to transfer in INR.
I tried everything - wrote to my HDFC bank, wrote to upwork and wrote to Western Union => They said check with Convera (new company who apparently took over that business from Western Union). I wrote to Convera as well. Fortunately, I got reply from all of them but everyone said one thing - We can't help you!!! FIRCs are not available because transactions were paid in INR to India.
I provided all the communication and the invoices to the GST department. Still, yesterday I got another notice asking to pay about 14.5% Service Tax + Equal Amount of Penalty + Applicable Interest (from 2016 till date) on the "export" income I showed in my Service Tax Return. So, just because I withdrew the amount in INR (and fundamentally I didn't do any cheating or fraud), I now have to pay a huge sum of tax, penalty etc.
@upwork - If you are unable to help us in providing FIRCs (because money was withdrawn in INR), why don't you stop giving us an option to withdraw locally?? I can see lot of posts from community members on this topic, but still there is no action being taken from your end. As per Indian GST laws, if the payments are not received in foreign convertible currency, then those payments cannot be considered against export services and we as agencies/freelancers have to pay applicable taxes to the government in lieu of the same. So, before more agencies/freelancers become victim of this, why don't you remove the option to withdraw locally? Trust me there is a huge monetary penatly and a massive mental harrasment in such cases. I am sure my fellow members will agree to it.
