NEW DELHI: The last date for filing GSTR-2 has been extended to November 30 from October 31 and for GSTR-3, it is December 11, which will facilitate about 30.81 lakh taxpayers for filing GSTR-2 for the month of July 2017.
“The competent authority has approved the extension of filing of GSTR-2 for July 2017 to November 2017 for facilitation of businesses and all taxpayers,” said a finance ministry statement. The move has been done following the inputs received from the Group of Ministers on GSTN headed by Bihar deputy CM Sushil Modi. Officials in the finance ministry maintained that there would not be any impact on the accounting for the financial year by this extension.
“Looking at the practical deficiency, a pragmatic, timely and much appreciated step has been taken by the government to extend the due date of GSTR 2 and 3 for the month of July 2017,” said Aditya Singhania, deputy general manager (GST), Taxmann. Finance ministry officials said the decision was taken after receiving inputs from the tax payers as well as the GSTN.
In its meeting last week at Bengaluru, the GoM had flagged the issues faced by taxpayers in filing GSTR-2. It had also asked the Infosys and GST Network to streamline the system. The necessary software changes are being carried out in the IT system, finance ministry officials said.
The original due date for filing GSTR-2 was October 31, while the last date for filing of GSTR-3, which is a matching form of GSTR-1 and 2, was November 11. About 12 lakh businesses had filed GSTR-2 returns for the month of July till the last week of October. However, late fee levied on this account would again be a point of concern for taxpayers.
“Furthermore, with due date being 11th December, 2017 for GSTR 3 will now open the opportunity for taxpayers to claim ITC from input service distributor (ISD), which earlier seems to be blocked since the due date of GSTR 6 (ISD return) being November 15, 2017 which was later than due date of filing GSTR 3 for the month of July 2017,” said Singhania.