With more than 65 lakh entities registered under the Goods and Services Tax regime, 43 lakh taxpayers filed their GST-1 return for July. The government extended the deadline for filing GSTR-1 by 2 months, with October 10 as the deadline. The penalty of Rs. 100 per day was also waived off in order to help the taxpayers in filing GST return for the first time. 

The government said that there would be no further extension of the deadline for GSTR-1 for the month of July. If the entity fails to file their return by October 10, then their buyer would face difficulty in availing Input Tax Credit. There are 2 more returns to be filed by a registered taxable person- GSTR-2 form with any corrections and input supplies i.e. purchases, to be filed on the 15th and the auto-populated GSTR-3 form for the tax return by the 20th.

GSTR-1 is a monthly return that every dealer registered under the GST system has to submit to the government. It comprises of all the sales or outward supplies made by the entity in a month and it auto-populates GSTR-3 for the entity and GSTR-2A for buyers to whom supplies have been made. A seller is supposed to file GSTR-1 within the stipulated deadline even if the return is nil and there are no transactions for the month.

Under the GST regime, all the outward supplies or sales to any registered businesses are to be uploaded in form of invoices and sales to unregistered businesses and end-consumers are to be uploaded rate-wise. Once the GSTR-1 is submitted, the corresponding submissions in GSTR-2A of the buyers get auto-generated. The buyer finalises their GSTR-2 post any amendments like addition, deletion or corrections. The ITC i.e. Input Tax Credit is available on the basis of GSTR-2. 

The registered sellers had faced several glitches while filing their GSTR, where some taxpayers were not able to upload their invoices, others faced issues while making a payment for their returns. The GSTN failed to work for several hours, making it difficult for taxpayers to stick to the deadlines. A special committee was set-up to resolve these technology-related issues in September, after which the government extended the deadline to October 10. 

GST officials have claimed that the reason behind a gap between the number of registered entities and the number of businesses that filed the return is that some businesses did not transact returns at all in July or had a turnover of less than Rs. 20 lakhs.

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