GST Council May Extend GSTR 3B Deadline

On March 10, The GST Council will meet for its 26th meeting since the new GST Tax was levied last year. The deadline for filing of sales return i.e the GSTR-3B may be increased by three months till June. The GST Council will in all probability declare so after the meeting scheduled for tomorrow. Another important agenda that tops the Council’s List is finalizing a simplified return filing procedure for businesses registered under Goods and Services Tax (GST). If the Council, led by the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, agrees on the proposed return filing system, it’s implementation will still take three months.

Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi led GoM has been endowed the responsibility to prepare a single form return filing procedure under GST. As per reports, the group’s last meeting was a right step ahead in this direction. The regular round of discussions, however, has not yet bored a conclusive solution for a single form return filing procedure.

Nandan Nilekani was also present in the GoM meet held last month. The Centre and State officials of the GoM presented their respective models for simplifying the return procedure. The core objective of the meet was to devise a solution for making GST less complex and easy for business forms. To reduce taxpayer compliance and implement only one return each month under GST.

GST was levied on July 1. Since then 8 crore GST returns have been filed via the GSTN Network. The inability to match invoice as well lack of proper anti-evasion measures has resulted in the regular decline of GST collections. This is confirmed by the official GSTR-3B return data for the month of December and January.The total GSTR-3B revenue generated in December was Rs. 86,703 crore. Compare this to the Rs 86,318 crore revenue to the Exchequer for the month of January. During the initial months, this revenue amounted to Rs 95,000 crore. Hence, there has been a steep decline when we look at figures of GSTR-3B returns. And the GST Council needs to employ a proper and simple return filing procedures to check this decline.