GST Council Allows Quarterly Returns Filing For Less Than Rs 5 Crore Turnover

After the GST Council Meeting held on Monday, the Finance Ministry said that to simplify ease of doing business, "the timely filing of GSTR-1 statement alone would be sufficient as the return in FORM GSTR-3B would get auto prepared on the GST common portal."

In a statement, the ministry said that to implement the same, the Council recommended/decided the following:

• Due date of furnishing quarterly GSTR-1 by quarterly taxpayers to be revised to 13th of the month succeeding the quarter with effect from 1 January 2021.
• Roadmap for auto-generation of GSTR-3B from GSTR-1s by: Auto-population of liability from own GSTR-1with effect from 1 January 2021; and Auto-population of the input tax credit from suppliers' GSTR-1s through the newly developed facility in FORM GSTR-2B for monthly filers with effect from 1 January 2021 and for quarterly filers with effect from 1 April 2021;
• In order to ensure auto-population of ITC and liability in GSTR 3B, FORM GSTR 1would be mandatorily required to be filed before FORM GSTR 3B with effect from 1 April 2021.
• The present GSTR-1/3B return filing system to be extended till 31 March 2021 and the GST laws to be amended to make the GSTR-1/3B return filing system as the default return filing system.

Further, to reduce the compliance burden particularly on the small taxpayers having aggregate annual turnover of less than Rs 5 crore, the Council allowed filing of returns on a quarterly basis with monthly payments by such taxpayers to be implemented from 1 January 2021.

"Such quarterly taxpayers would, for the first two months of the quarter, have an option to pay 35% of the net cash tax liability of the last quarter using an auto-generated challan," the ministry said.