Due to the lockdown preceded by Covid- 19 outbreak the government has been enforced to extend the deadline for filing the annual return of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) for the fiscal year  2019-20. GST regulation states that business personnel or entity associated with an online business, must register and pay GST, no matter how less the turnover is for it also has its benefits.

Nonetheless, the deadline to file GST for the previous financial year has been extended from December 31, 2020, to February 28, 2021. The reason being is the challenges faced by taxpayers in meeting to follow the statutory and regulatory compliances due to the pandemic. Therefore, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs felt the need to extend deadlines for filing personal income tax returns by 10 days and about one-and-a-half months for audit cases.

Thus, as a result, the extension of the deadline will allow more time to businesses and tax practitioners to overcome the challenges in filing returns. It has also pointed out a few of the challenges such as a mismatch between input tax credit (ITC) appearing in the GSTR 2A—a purchase-related tax return that is automatically generated—and tax credit auto-filled in the GSTR-9. 

It is also seen how it has caused a lot of confusion and pain for both GST professionals and taxpayers. Form GSTR-9 requires the bifurcation of all input tax credit availed from inputs, input services and capital goods. Not all taxpayers would have kept a record of this bifurcation leading to undue stress of obtaining these details now, to avoid incorrectly reporting the same.

 
The government also made HSN [Harmonized System of Nomenclature]  disclosure mandatory by suppliers having a turnover above Rs1.5 crore. It is a requirement for both inward and outward supplies. This has caused unnecessary hassles for taxpayers who had not been maintaining this data in the past and will now need to spend a lot of additional time and effort in order to obtain and report these details. Besides, the government has also extended the declaration window under Vivad Se Vishwas Scheme 2020 by a month to January 31.