India GST filings reform

The Indian GST Council, which oversees the operations of the indirect tax regime, agreed last week to reform monthly filings by the end of 2018. It also agreed to bring under full governmental control the GST Network (GSTN), the IT platform tax  payers file through.

GST was launched in India in July 2017, and included a three-stage filings process.This aimed, through three separate filings staged over the month end, to allow vendors and customers to upload their invoice records, reconcile to each others records and then agree a final return. However, businesses and the GSTN struggled with the ambitious reconciliation of cross-businesses sales and purchases.

Filings will therefore be simplified to a single, monthly filing. Small traders, using the simplified Composite Dealer scheme – approximately one third of businesses - will only have to file quarterly.

The aim is to shift to the vendor providing the tax office details of their customers’ input VAT. It will come over the following phases:

1. The current system will continue until 1 Jan 2019. This includes the GSTR 3B and GSTR 1 filings. GSTR 2 and 3 will continue to be suspended.
2. From Jan 2019, tax payers will submit purchase GST invoice data in similar reporting format to the GSTR 1, and the customer will claim a GST input credit for sales against their GSTIN (GST ID)
3. In the final phase, input GST will be based on vendor provided data only.

Starting May 2018, a group of ministers will chair this change in process, and finalize it over the next 6 months.

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