Why can’t you revise returns in GSTR if you can revise returns under the IT Act?

“I have visited my CA in Khurja, the nearest town in our locality in August as well as last month, but he could not help me file my GSTR 3B form,” says Hirachand. “He tried but gave up saying it is too complicated and it was risky as mistakes cannot be corrected after submission. He gave me the number of his friend a CA in Delhi and I visited him twice. But I still have not been able to file my returns,” says Hirachand, the cloth merchant living barely 100 miles away from the capital city.

“Once there were many of his regular clients in queue, and the other time the GSTN network was not working. I don’t know English myself nor computers and though I have registered under GST, I will not be able to pay my taxes,” Hirachand says.

There are millions like Hirachand who have not been able to file GSTR 3B and will miss the October 10 deadline for filing GSTR 1.

Also read | GST evasion raids: 12 provisions under the GSTR Act that could land you in jail

Infosys needs to get its act together first

Filing dates have been extended before and late-payment fines have been waived. They need to be reviewed and revised again, or a new chaos will commence from the middle of next week. Perhaps the last dates should click in only after the teething technical issues are sorted out.

As a matter of fact, the purchase returns GSTR 2 date should be pushed back to December giving Infosys the network designer ample time to rectify all glitches in the GSTR3B filing. Without de-clogging step 1 you should not take step 2. Especially because more than a third have not filed the GSTR3B. After sorting out the technical issues Infosys should be asked to augment the server capacity to handle at least twice the concurrent users of today. If Flipkart can handle a billion customers a day during ‘Big Billion Days’ then GSTN portal should at least cater to 5 million.

Why can’t you revise a sales return?

The already overloaded GSTN system is bound to clog up further with the uploading of purchase returns in GSTR 2. With the filing of GSTR 2 will start another dimension of matching returns. This could further complicate the matters as under the GSTR act you cannot revise a wrongly filled up form once it is submitted. It is a strange clause because a revised return is permitted even in the Income Tax Act.

Filing errors do happen in any accounting system and revised returns are accepted. So why is GSTR an exception? Well it is the typical mindset of the Indian bureaucracy, which believes that businessmen manipulate and readjust data, which they should not be allowed to. So, while you can edit and save GSTR-3B any number of times you cannot rectify GSTR 3B once you have hit the submit button. All these needless restrictions need to be sorted out before GSTR 2 is filed. Revising GSTR 3B is a legitimate right of any business house and it is bizarre and illogical to have such clauses. Is this ease of business?

The ministers are proactive but it is the bureaucrats who must listen

Despite the multiple problems that GSTN implementation has been through, there is hope for improvement. This because the government has been proactive at the highest level to sort out the issues. This is not to say that problems have been resolved. But at least it appears that there is a will to resolve the issues.

Though the bureaucracy had been singing “All is Well” within weeks of launch of the GSTR scheme the political leadership has been quick to respond to the list of growing complaints. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu and Sushil Modi who heads the GOM committee to sort out technical issues have been pretty proactive. As a matter of fact many businessmen say that it is the departments and the bureaucracy which is holding up the simplification and de-clogging of the GST.