About 70% of the assessees under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) had filed detailed sales returns for July on Tuesday, as it was the official deadline.

No further extension was given as earlier the GST filing deadline had been extended twice earlier. About 4.59 million entities of the eligible 6.5 million filed the Goods and Services Tax Return-1 (GST R-1), for the first month of GST.

The deadline to file GST R-1 was extended by a month from September 10, 2017 at the GST Council meeting last month in Hyderabad. Earlier, the deadline was extended from September 5 on account of technical issues with GST Network (GSTN).

If a taxpayer fails to file GSTR-1 by the deadline, the buyer of his products would face difficulty in availing of input tax credit.

It is possible many dealers with GST Registration have zero turnover. Hence, did not file the return. The government will have to look into the matter to investigate and take corrective steps.

The inward supplies return or GSTR-2 for July has to be filed by October 31. And, GSTR-3 by November 10. When GSTR-1 will be filed, the government utilises the information to verify GSTR-3 for the dealer and GSTR-2A for dealers to whom supplies have been made.

For the transition period, the government alleged to file self-summary returns for input-output, called GSTR-3B. Only about 64% of those eligible filed GSTR-3B, for August; 84.2% did so for July. Out of 7.3 million eligible ones, 4.7 million filed the summarised return for August.

The questions suggested in the survey on why GSTR-3B was not filed? Reason being:

• The site was not functioning
• Filing process was too complicated
• System didn’t allow me to file nil return
• ‘Could not’ preview return details before filing returns.

From now on, tax officers will ask for suggestions to improve the process for filing returns.

Source: Business Standard