GST Return Filing Guide for Tax Consultants

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

1. Introduction
2. Details Required at invoice level
3. Types of clients
4. What are the challenges with clients who give you digitized GST invoices?
5. What are the challenges with clients who give you manual GST invoices?
6. Conclusion

Introduction

 
The country has moved into GST regime. As tax consultants, there are lot of laws and articles to read, several discussions to participate in, and many thoughts crossing your minds. GST will no doubt change the way business is done in India. How has it impacted the life of a tax consultant? To know more about this first let’s understand the details required in GST returns.

Details required at invoice level
Now as we have identified timeline for GST returns, let us understand details that are required at invoice level to provide GST returns:

1. Individual tax-rate-wise break up of taxable value.
2. State Tax, Central Tax and Integrated Tax charged for each tax rate.
3. Correct GSTIN numbers of recipients, place of supply, invoice number in the accepted format, date, invoice value, and so on.
4. HSN-wise summary for return filing (businesses with turnover less than 1.5 Crore are expected to give goods-description-wise summary).
5. Bifurcation of invoices based on:
   • Supplies attracting tax on reverse charge basis.
   • Supplies made through e-commerce operator with GSTIN of e-commerce operator.

 
There are several other invoicing rules that also need to be followed apart from the above;

1. Any B2C invoices where the invoice value exceeds Rs. 2.5 Lakh, needs to be captured in a separate table with invoice level details.
2. Separate tables for Credit/Debit notes, exports, exempt supplies, tax liability on advances, advance adjustments, and so on.

Types of clients
With all above complexities in the new GST regime, how well are you prepared to handle your clients? To understand these let us discuss on types of clients that will exist in GST era:

1. Clients who have digitised their GST bills and give you data in different file formats for return filing.
2. Clients who maintain manual GST bills, and rely on you to digitise their invoices before return filing.

What are the challenges with clients who give you digitised GST invoices?

1. Are the right HSN codes and tax rates used in the invoices?
2. Do invoices contain other necessary information like GSTIN numbers of recipients, place of supply, and so on, and are they recorded properly?
3. Do you have an easy way to know what is missing in the data or what are the errors in the data, so that you can quickly get them corrected before return filing?
4. Does the data format let you file returns quickly without any further efforts?

What are the challenges with clients who give you manual GST invoices?

1. Can they actually record all their GST invoices accurately on manual books or any excel templates that you might have given them?
2. If they use a single tax component called GST, and record their sales, how can they be categorized into integrated, state and central taxes at a later stage?
3. How can you be sure that HSN codes, rates and tax amount charged are actually correct on them?
4. What about the additional time that you will end up spending to make sure that every invoice is error free, digitised and compliant? How many such clients can you serve?

Conclusion
Given these challenges, following key points will help you in your profession:

1. Invoice digitisation is the need of the hour. Get started, ask your clients to digitise their invoices using a GST-compliant software.
2. Your client’s GST software should check for accuracy of every invoice and give an opportunity to correct them in case of errors. This will help you reduce rejection rate from the portal.
3. Your client’s GST software should provide you the opportunity to view and approve data before returns are filed.
4. Your client’s GST software should be able to generate returns data along with all the table-wise information, as prescribed by the forms.
5. Not just the data accuracy, even returns data in the exact return format as per GSTN is taken care of in your client’s GST Software. Easily export your client’s data in the exact return format and complete return filing at the click of a button.

With this GST Guide for Tax Consultants, we hope you could understand how the life of tax consultants looks like in GST regime, and key points which will help. We look forward to your comments and thoughts.
Also Read

1. How to File Form GSTR-3B
2. Managing Form GSTR 3B in GST-Ready Tally.ERP 9 Release 6