Trade assessees seek more time to file GST returns

Suppliers of goods and services seem to be in a fix over filing the GSTR 1 return for July 2017. With just two days left for filing of the said return, the assessees, after encountering various problems in uploading of details, have now sought extension of time by a fortnight to enable them comply with the norms.

The GST Council must extend the date for filing of GSTR 1 (for July) till September 25, said S Rethinavelu, Senior President, Tamil Nadu Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Explaining the difficulty, he said “Details of outward supplies have to be extracted from the accounting system to be converted to a JSON file using GST offline tool provided by the GST portal and this file has to be uploaded on to the GST portal. “Due to inability of the portal to cope with high traffic volume and large data, often not all invoices could be imported into the utility tool provided by the portal.

“The missing invoices will have to be tracked and the details entered manually. It takes between 6 and 24 hours for the portal to identify the errors. Caught between the system glitches and the time left for filing of the said return, the assessees are unable to focus on their business.

“It is, therefore, incumbent on the GST Council to simplify the return such that the details of supply to the registered persons (B2B) and supply to unregistered persons and consumers (B2C) are sufficient to complete filing of GSTR 1 return during the first six months.

“GST Suvidhar Providers should be instructed to identify the errors in GSTIN of the recipients before furnishing the details for uploading into GSTR 1. The time taken for uploading the details is worrying” he said.

Codissia President Sundaram said the MSMEs are unable to focus on their business (production) on the one hand and deal with return filing deadline on the other and the site is not responding fast enough and gets logged out rather quickly. “MSMEs are unable to complete uploading/ entering the details. The site is down more often, possibly due to heavy traffic/overload,” he said. According to Sundaram, the July billing had dropped significantly. “MSME business has dropped by 30 to 50 per cent. While we welcome GST implementation, there is still a lot of ambiguity and confusion on reverse charges. Issues will resolve ultimately, but MSME business is impacted, he said.