4 New Promising Features on the GST Portal Announced by GSTN

The government portal has been updated with new features for GST taxpayers, as detailed below:

1. Invoice-level Information for Table 8A of GSTR-9 Now Available

The GSTN has now provided a button ‘Download Table 8A Document Details’ under the GSTR-9 tab. The new facility helps taxpayers to conveniently reconcile Input Tax Credit (ITC) data for an entire financial year while preparing GSTR-9. 

Before this, a single yearly ITC figure was auto-populated in Table 8A of GSTR-9 from the GSTR-2A. It was bifurcated as IGST, CGST, SGST and cess. The taxpayer found it tasking to verify and reconcile ITC for the whole year, at both vendor and document level. 

Going forward, the taxpayer can get an excel file from the government portal for the document-wise ITC break up for the financial year. It allows the taxpayer to track ITC differences at a document level easily.

The document contains GSTR-2A data between 1st April 2018 and 30th September 2019. The appropriate data to be reported in GSTR-9 is, for example, from 1st April 2018 to 31st March 2019. However, the excel consists of information for the next six months too. It assists taxpayers to easily track invoices of FY 2018-19 reported by vendors in FY 2019-20. It also mentions whether or not the ITC claim is allowed against every document.

The excel consists of entries classified into four categories such as Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Business Amendment (B2BA), Credit-Debit Notes (CDNR) and Credit-Debit Notes Amendment (CDNRA). Further, it provides dates of filing GSTR-1 by the vendor, nature of amendments, if any and reason for non-accounting, in such cases, for every document.

2. All-new GSTR-2B Return Specifics are Available on the Developer Portal

GSTR-2B is an auto-drafted ITC statement similar to GSTR-2A but is static for every month. The statement is available by 12th of the month next to the relevant month. It gives particulars of ITC eligible and ineligible for claims between 12th of a month and up to 11th of the next month.

The recipients can follow the advisory given against each section of GSTR-2B to take respective action.

3. Facility to Revoke a Cancelled GST Registration is Available

An extended time has been provided to revoke any cancelled GST registration where such application was rejected anytime before. The cancellation order must have been passed on or before 12th June 2020. The facility is also available for those whose appeal against rejected applications are pending for a decision.

Also Read: GSTN Launches GSTR-2B Statement For Easy ITC Reconciliation

The aggrieved taxpayers have been given another opportunity till 30 days from the date, which is later of:

1. Date of issue of cancellation order or
2. 31st August 2020

The taxpayer must log in to the government portal. After that, he must go to Services > Registration > Application for Revocation. 

4. The Offline Utility of GSTR-4 (Annual Return) is Live on the GST Portal

Recently, the GST portal went live with the GSTR-4 (Annual Return) filing facility. Now, its offline version is also released for taxpayers. The offline utility consists of an excel file which can be downloaded, filled up, validated for any errors before it can be uploaded onto the GST portal and filed.

Lastly, the GSTN has fixed the facility to file GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B for July 2017 as on 6th August 2020. On 1st August 2020, the users were taken by surprise when they could not access these facilities on the government portal. The tech side of GSTN tweeted that the issue will be resolved by 4th August 2020.

Those who had not filed the returns for July 2017 were left inconvenienced since the last week. Regular data backup becomes essential for taxpayers even though they use the GST portal. The portal also provides an option to download the JSON file after the taxpayer files the return. Taxpayers may use tools and software to file GST returns as it comes with the auto-backup feature.

For any clarifications/feedback on the topic, please contact the writer at annapoorna.m@cleartax.in