This blog post is updated with the GST Council’s decision to extend the return due dates

This guide is written for GST Tax Consultants (GST Tax Practitioners). If you are a business owner, you might still find it interesting to read further and forward this to your tax consultant.

Topics Covered

Every registered taxable person has to furnish outward supply details in Form GSTR-1 (GST Returns-1) by the 10th of the subsequent month. On the 11th, the visibility of inward supplies is made available to the recipient in the auto-populated GSTR-2A.

This blog post is updated with the GST Council’s decision to extend the return due dates
The 17th GST Council meeting held on 18th June, 2017, provided a much needed relief to the businesses across the nation. Listening to the concerns raised by the various trade and industrial bodies, and to ensure the smooth roll out of GST, the council decided to extend the timeline for invoice-wise return filing in Form GSTR-1 and Form GSTR-2 for the first six months (Revised). 

This post has been updated on 25th October, 2016 to incorporate latest changes.
Convergence is the key to GST; convergence between states and central taxes.
Consider what happens today. A manufacturer who is compliant under Central Excise, Service Tax, and VAT has to file returns as specified by each of the states.  The manufacturer has to deal with returns, annexures, and registers for Excise, Service tax and VAT with monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and yearly periodicity.

In our earlier blog, ‘Matching of GSTR-3B with GSTR-1, GSTR-2 and GSTR-3’ we discussed on how the GST system reconciles GSTR-3B with Forms GSTR-1, GSTR-2 and GSTR-3.In this blog, we will discuss about the impact of mismatch of GSTR-3B with GSTR-3 on businesses.
 
After matching GSTR-3B with GSTR-3, the outcome will result into any one of the following situation.

The extension of due dates to file GSTR-1, GSTR-2 and GSTR-3 of July 2017 is a welcome move, as it provides an additional time for businesses to prepare the accurate returns for better compliance.. Now, the businesses are required to file GSTR-1 by 10th October, 2017, GSTR-2 by 31st October, 2017 and GSTR-3 by 10th November, 2017. To know more on the revised due dates, please read ‘GST Return Dates: for August and September, 2017’.
 

With the completion of the filing of GSTR-3B returns last month, businesses are now preparing in full swing to file their GSTR-1 returns.
The recent decision by the GST Implementation Committee to extend the due dates for filing GSTR-1, GSTR-2 and GSTR-3 for the month of July, offers a much needed relief to the businesses. You will get additional time to prepare accurate returns. The revised dates are as follows.

Returns period

GSTR-1

GSTR-2

GSTR-3

July,2017

 10th October,2017

31st October,2017

We introduced Input Tax Credit (ITC) in a previous post.
Now let us understand how to set off your input credit against your tax liability in the GST regime.
GST is a dual concept system. On every transaction (within a state), there will be component of Central GST (CGST) and State GST (SGST). Integrated GST (IGST) is for interstate transactions. Therefore, it is important for businesses to know how to set off the input credit against each of these components in the order as prescribed by the Law.

In the current tax regime, various conditions are applicable for availing input tax credit. A brief overview is given below:

Type of Input Tax Credit

Conditions for availing Input Tax Credit (ITC)

VAT

As a VAT dealer, you can avail credit of the VAT paid on goods purchased in the course of business, for re-sale or for manufacture of goods, subject to conditions. Only purchases from registered dealers within the state are eligible for ITC

CENVAT/Service Tax