Deadline for filing GSTR-2, 3 extended by a month
What's the story
A week after waiving penalties on delayed filing of GST returns for August and September, the government has extended the deadline for filing GSTR-2 returns and GSTR-3 for July, to November 30 and December 11 respectively.
The initial last dates for GSTR-2 and GSTR-3 were October 31 and November 10 respectively.
This move is expected to benefit over 30.81L taxpayers.
Factors
Why was the decision taken?
The decision came after a ministerial panel flagged several issues being faced by taxpayers. A major issue is the need to match invoices.
After the GSTR-2 (or sales return) is filed, it has to be matched with the GSTR-3 (purchase return).
Taxpayers faced problems in uploading returns too.
Infosys and GSTN were asked to resolve the issues.
Action
What is the government doing now?
The panel led by Bihar Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi flagged is now working on correcting the issues.
Infosys was asked to deploy engineers in all major states by October. "They have done so in nine states and sought time till November end," Modi said.
The panel has also directed "more pop-up messages, more offline utilities, editing facilities for businesses transacting on the portal."
Data
Has late filing of returns become a trend?
Data shows that across categories, filing returns after the deadline is common. Out of 55.87L returns filed for July, only 33.98L were before the deadline. Similar trends were seen for August (28.46L out of 51.37L by deadline) and September (39.4L out of over 42L).