Hoping to make compliance easier for businesses under the Goods and Services Tax regime, the government has extended the deadline for GSTR-2 and 3 for the month of July.

The Finance Ministry on Monday said that the last date for filing GSTR-2 for July has been shifted to November 30 from the earlier deadline of October 31.

Similarly, the deadline for GSTR-3 has been extended to December 11 from the earlier last date of November 10.

“This will facilitate about 30.81 lakh taxpayers for filing GSTR-2 for the month of July 2017,” it said, adding that a notification to this effect will be issued soon.

Significantly, this is the second time that an extension has been given to file GST returns.

Earlier, in September, the GST Implementation Committee had shifted the deadline for filing GSTR-1, GSTR-2 and GSTR-3 for July to September 10, September 25 and September 30, 2017, respectively.

It was then further extended by the GST Council when it met on September 9 in Hyderabad.

The original deadline for filing the full returns for July was September 5, September 10 and September 25.

However, there is still no clarity on when the full returns for August will be filed.

Till now, businesses have filed the GSTR-3B which is a summary return form for July, August and September and have been paying taxes accordingly.

Many businesses had called for another extension in filing GSTR-2 returns due to technical glitches. Further, the deadline of October 31 for the return coincided with that for filing income tax returns and audited reports by businesses.

“GSTR-2 is the most important return for GST compliance since availability of input tax credit depends on it. This return requires matching and reconciling and automatic review, to make sure manual effort is minimised,” noted Archit Gupta, Foudner and CEO, ClearTax.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW