India GST returns simplifications 2019

India is planning to introduce a single Goods and Services Tax return at the start of 2019. This will bring to close the difficult, but momentous introductory phase of the new GST tax, which replaced in July 2017 a plethora of complex and double taxing indirect levies, including VAT, CENVAT, Service Tax and over twenty other charges.

Originally, GST required a three-stage submission of taxable transactions to complete the monthly liability confirmation process. This included vendors filing their sales invoices, which had to be then approved by their customers. However, this buckled under IT difficulties of the central clearding system, GST Network.

The new, proposed process will roll out in three stages. 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.

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