Centre Allows further Operational Flexibility to GST Filers

· Saved Invoices should be Moved to GSTR Quarterly Return by New Software Patch

The government has allowed further flexibility to tax filers operating under the Quarterly Return Filing and Monthly Payment of Taxes (QRMP) scheme of GST.

These tax filers will now be permitted to declare invoices pertaining to movement of goods and services in their quarterly return form GSTR 1 to be filed in the last month of each quarter.

As per an advisory issued by the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), the taxpayer must ensure that any saved but not Filed/Submitted IFF (Invoice Furnishing Facility) records for the first two months of the quarter i.e. month of Jan-2021 or Feb-2021 must be deleted using RESET button before filing GSTR-1 for Jan-Mar-2021 quarter.

The advisory added that the deleted records should be added in GSTR-1 for Jan-Mar-2021 quarter after deleting the saved records from IFF. In future this may not be required as invoices already saved in any of the months on the quarter may be either deleted/moved to quarterly GSTR-1 by a functionality to be introduced shortly.

The advisory also said that any submitted but not filed IFF for the month of Jan-2021 or Feb-2021 must be filed before filing GSTR-1 for Jan-Mar-2021 quarter.

The advisory has been issued for filing quarterly GSTR-1 for January - March 2021 under QRMP scheme.

The taxpayers under QRMP scheme have a facility to file Invoice Furnishing Facility (IFF) in first two months of the quarter and file Form GSTR-1 in third month of the quarter. As IFF is an optional facility it cannot be filed after the end date (13th of the month succeeding the IFF period).

The document saved in IFF, where taxpayer has not filed by the end date, cannot be filed anymore. Hence taxpayers have been asked to declare such document in the GSTR-1 for the quarter.