Government Extends GST Annual Return Filing Deadline By Three Months
Businesses can now file their annual GST returns by Nov. 30, 2019 as against the previous due date of Aug. 31.
The government on Monday extended the deadline to file goods and service tax annual returns for 2017-18 for the fourth time.
Businesses can now file their annual returns by Nov. 30, 2019 as against the previous due date of Aug. 31, according to a statement by the Ministry of Finance.
This will be the first annual return that businesses would be filing after the new indirect tax regime was implemented.
“This should help in providing relief to businesses,” said Abhishek Jain, partner at EY India. Businesses were awaiting this extension due to some system-related issues and ambiguities in reporting, he said.
Besides GST annual returns or GSTR-9, the deadline for filing GSTR-9A and GSTR-9C have also been extended till Nov. 30. GSTR-9A is the annual return that composition dealers—those who pay a flat GST rate without claiming input credit—have to file under GST. Businesses with annual turnover of over Rs 2 crore have to get their accounts audited, and share a copy of their audited annual accounts and a reconciliation statement in form GSTR-9C.
The move will benefit more than one crore traders in the country, said Praveen Khandelwal, secretary general of Confederation of All India Traders. The extension shows the positive approach of the government in understanding problems of traders, he said.