The government has extended the deadline for filing the annual return of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) for 2019-20 by two months after businesses and tax consultants demanded respite on grounds of complexities in compliance and disruptions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, government officials said.
The deadline to file annual return of GST for the previous fiscal has been extended from December 31, 2020 to February 28, 2021 in view of the challenges faced by taxpayers in meeting the statutory and regulatory compliances due to the pandemic, they said, requesting anonymity. The government on Wednesday also extended deadlines for filing personal income tax returns by 10 days and about one-and-a-half months for audit cases.
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Mohan D, director, product management at Tally Solutions said, “The deadline to file annual returns [GSTR 9 and 9C] has been extended a couple of times for various reasons such as complexities in the form and filing. For GSTPs [GST professionals] and businesses both, the last one year has been a confusing and complex period, trying to understand the intricate GSTR-9 form, while tallying their monthly and quarterly filed returns with their books of accounts.”
The extension of the deadline will allow more time to businesses and tax practitioners to overcome the challenges in filling returns, he said. He pointed at some of the challenges such as mismatch between input tax credit (ITC) appearing in the GSTR 2A—a purchase-related tax return that is automatically generated—and tax credit auto-filled in the GSTR-9, which has caused a lot of confusion and pain for both GST professionals and taxpayers.
{{/usCountry}}The extension of the deadline will allow more time to businesses and tax practitioners to overcome the challenges in filling returns, he said. He pointed at some of the challenges such as mismatch between input tax credit (ITC) appearing in the GSTR 2A—a purchase-related tax return that is automatically generated—and tax credit auto-filled in the GSTR-9, which has caused a lot of confusion and pain for both GST professionals and taxpayers.
{{/usCountry}}“Form GSTR-9 requires the bifurcation of all input tax credit availed from inputs, input services and capital goods. This, in turn, requires a complete and thorough analysis of the books of accounts of a taxpayer, in addition to verification by the concerned auditor. Not all taxpayers would have kept a record of this bifurcation leading to undue stress of obtaining these details now, to avoid incorrectly reporting the same,” he added.
“HSN [Harmonized System of Nomenclature] summary details are required to be disclosed mandatorily by suppliers having a turnover above Rs1.5 crore. This requirement is for both inward and outward supplies. This has caused unnecessary hassles for taxpayers who had not been maintaining this data in the past and will now need to spend a lot of additional time and effort in order to obtain and report these details,” he said.