‘Don’t wait till last day to file GST returns’

Arun Jaitley said the GST Network had no difficulty to upload returns till last night, but when 75 per cent of businesses throng the portal on a day, there would be trouble.

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Finance Minister Arun Jaitley (Source: PTI Photo)

To avoid last minute rush for tax filing on the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), finance minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said that GST assessees should start filing by 14th or 15th of the month to have an “easy entry” into the system. Jaitley said about 75 per cent of the assessees have waited till the last day (September 20) to file their August GSTR-3B return.

He said the GSTN has the capacity to handle 1 lakh returns per hour, which translates into 24 lakh returns in a day. “A lot of this problem is self invited by certain assessees. Today is the last day to pay taxes for August. Till last night, about 25 per cent people had filed the return and paid their taxes. So, 75 per cent waited for the last day,” he said.

Jaitley said the GST Network had no difficulty to upload returns till last night, but when 75 per cent of businesses throng the portal on a day, there would be trouble. “Therefore I would appeal to everybody, it is in their interest (to file returns early),” he said.

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In its 21st meeting, the GST Council had allowed businesses to file their GSTR-3B returns for the first six months of GST rollout till December. Accordingly, the GSTR-3B returns would have to be filed by the 20th of the next month, which means August returns need to be uploaded by September 20. Over 46 lakh GSTR-3B returns were filed for July and the tally is expected to be similar for August.

Taxes to the tune of Rs 95,000 crore were collected in July. Till noon on Wednesday, 18.41 lakh businesses had filed returns for August. GSTN had faced glitches due to overload during GSTR-3B filing for July, which had forced the government to extend the due date for filing of returns.