Nearly 3.7 mn file GST returns ahead of Friday midnight deadline

Nearly 3.7 million taxpayers have filed GST returns for September till 7-00 pm and 75,000 sales data are being uploaded on the GSTN portal on an hourly basis, its chairman Ajay Bhushan Pandey said on Friday.

About 36.84 lakh taxpayers filed GSTR-3B returns or summarised returns for September till 7-00 pm with only hours left for the deadline for filing the initial returns in GSTR-3B for September under the goods and services tax ending at midnight of Friday.

A PTI report quoting Pandey said the GSTN system is stable and has been handling data at just 30 per cent of its capacity with 2 million returns being uploaded in the last two days.

Pandey said 3.6 million returns have been filed till 1900 hours with the last day of GST returns filing peaked to record 1.37 million.

"The pace of filing is picking up with an average 75,000 returns being uploaded on an hourly basis. GSTN system is stable. We hope more people are able to file return within the due date," he said.

This is the third month for which businesses have to file GSTR-3B returns listing out details of their sales since the 1 July roll-out of GST.

For July and August, 5.5 million and 5 million returns had been filed, fetching Rs95,000 crore and Rs92,000 crore in revenue, respectively.

These, however, have been carried out over extended periods, past the due dates and Pandey expects the September numbers to go up as businesses start filing returns late.

"If we see the capacity of the network, GSTN is using only 30 per cent of its capacity. So, there is a lot of headroom available for the server to upload more number of returns," Pandey said.

Businesses have to file GSTR-3B returns for each month latest by the 20th of the next month, which means September returns have to be uploaded by 20 October.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley had last month appealed to taxpayers to file GST returns before the due date and not wait till the last date to file returns.

To ease compliance burden, the GST Council has allowed businesses to file their initial tax returns in form GSTR-3B in the first six months of GST rollout till December.

The GST Network (GSTN) had faced glitches during the GSTR-3B filing for July, which had forced the government to extend the due date for filing of returns and had also waived the late payment fee.

The network has been working smoothly since the time of return filing for August.

The Group of Minister headed by Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Modi has met twice to look into the issues faced by GSTN and has smoothened its functioning after taking into account the troubles faced by stakeholders.