GST Council extends deadline to file returns for the second time

New Delhi – GSTN (Goods and Service tax network), which is called the backbone of the GST has been facing a lot of heat in the past. Due to the surge in the website traffic on their portal, the traders and the businesses have a hard time in filing their returns. Thus the government has decided to extend the last date for filing the returns for three categories, i.e., GSTR-1, GSTR-2, and GSTR-3.

GIC, called as the GST Implementation Committee decided that it would want to extend the dates for GSTR-1, GSTR-2 and GSTR-3 for the month of July to 10th, 25th, and 30th of September, 2017 respectively.

A proper notification is expected soon on this piece of news. The original deadline for filing the return was 5th, 10th and 15th of September respectively and the decision to extend the dates was taken by GIC, who have been given the authority to take any important decisions for that matter.

Simultaneously, the committee also decided to extend the deadline for filing these three returns for the month of August to 5th October, 10th, and 15th of October 2017. The original deadlines for these were 20th, 25th, and 30th September respectively.

This is the second instance where the government has been forced to extend the deadline. Earlier last month the government had to take calls and reschedule the deadline to 25th of August.

Mr. Mani, who is a senior director at Deloitte, said that there are no major glitches or bugs in the GSTN network but people are facing issues because of the surge in traffic as everybody is trying to access the website and file their returns at the same time.

Mr. Pratik Jain, who is a partner and a leader of indirect tax practice at PwC India, was of the opinion that it was good to see that the government has been showing some flexibility over in the process. But he also said that given the amount of data and the traffic expected, an extension of 5 days might just not be sufficient enough for the people. He said that if the government allows the businesses to file GSTR-3B till December 2017 and subsequently extends the timelines for other returns as well, then that would give the industry enough time to sort out glitches in systems and processes. As tax is collected on the monthly basis, it would have no impact on the revenue collections.

But this is a cause of concern for everyone. If companies are stuck with their filings for the month of July, people are wondering how and when they would file the returns for September and the subsequent months. The entire chain is working haphazardly right now.

The founder and CEO of clear tax, Archit Gupta, mentioned errors where taxpayers’ encountered issues such as their invoice date were before the date of the registration of the supplier.