GSTN Issues Advisories on Appeals, Pre-Deposit, GSTR-3B Interest & IMS Tool

Dr. Sanjiv Agarwal 27 Apr 2026 798 Views 0 comment Print Goods and Services Tax | Articles, Featured

Common portal of GST under the GST law, GSTN keeps on issuing advisories on new functions / updates on the portal for upgradation of functionalities and new options or functions enabled for implementation by taxpayers.

During the month of April, 2026, the following Advisories have been issued so far in relation to the various compliances by GSTN:

Difficulty in filing appeals on the GST portal
Advisory on Pre-deposit for Appeal
Advisory on Interest in GSTR-3B
Introduction of IMS Offline Tool on GST Portal

The gist of these Advisories / Updates is summarized hereunder for easy understanding:

Difficulty in filing appeals on the GST portal

It has come to the notice of GSTN that certain taxpayers are facing difficulties in filing appeals on the GST portal against demand orders wherein the demand amount is reflected as “NIL,” despite the existence of a dispute regarding tax liability.
This situation generally arises in cases where the taxpayer has made payment of tax, interest, or penalty (fully or partially) at the stage of issuance of the Show Cause Notice (SCN), without admitting the liability, and the adjudicating authority has subsequently issued a demand order treating such payment as full discharge of the demand without explicitly determining and recording the liability.
When a demand order is issued by the tax officer, the GST portal creates a Demand ID in the Demand and Collection Register (DCR), also known as the liability ledger.
In cases where the tax officer issues a demand order with a NIL amount, an entry is created with zero value, indicating that there is no outstanding liability. When the taxpayer attempts to file an appeal application (APL-01) against such a demand order, the portal restricts the filing of the appeal and may display an error such as: “Disputed amount cannot be more than demand amount itself.”
Since no liability is reported by the tax officer on the GST portal, the system blocks the taxpayer from filing an appeal.

Nature of Issue:

It is clarified that:
- Payment made during the SCN stage, without explicit admission of liability, does not amount to acceptance of the demand.
- In such cases, the taxpayer retains the right to contest the liability and file an appeal under Section 107 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017.
However, where the adjudication order incorrectly reflects a “NIL” demand, the taxpayer is unable to exercise this statutory right due to the NIL demand reflected in the system.

Alternate solution:

In cases where a dispute regarding liability exists but is not captured by the department in the demand order, and payment has been made prior to the issuance of the demand order, the taxpayer is advised to approach the adjudicating authority for issuance of a rectification order.
The taxpayer may file such rectification requests using the option available on the GST portal. Upon receipt of the rectification order reflecting the correct demand amount, the taxpayer may proceed to file an appeal on the GST portal within the prescribed time limits.

(Source: GSTN Advisory dated 03.04.2026)

Advisory on Pre-deposit for Appeal

GSTN has made ‘pre-deposit’ field editable for the filing of appeal w.e.f. 6^th April, 2026.

Pre-deposit is required to be made at the time of filing of appeal
Presently, while filing an appeal in Form APL-01 on the GST portal, the pre-deposit percentage is auto-populated as 10% in accordance with Section 107(6) of the CGST Act, 2017, and was previously non-editable.
Due to this restriction, taxpayers faced difficulties in cases where the pre-deposit had already been made through other means or where the demand amount was incorrectly reflected under the appropriate head, taxpayers were facing difficulties.
GSTN has now made the pre-deposit field editable at the time of filing the appeal, from April 6th, 2026.
This allows taxpayers to modify the pre-deposit percentage as applicable to their specific case and calculate and pay the required amount accordingly while submitting the appeal.
The appellate authority will subsequently verify the correctness of the pre-deposit amount and the mode of payment during the adjudication of the appeal.

(Source: GSTN Advisory dated 10.04.2026)

Advisory on Interest in GSTR-3B

As a facilitation measure for taxpayers and assisting the taxpayers in doing a correct self-assessment, GST Portal auto-calculates interest on delayed filing of GSTR-3B based on the tax liability discharged and tax liability breakup provided in “Tax Liability Breakup, As Applicable”
This system computed interest is auto-populated and collected in the Table-5.1 of the subsequent period GSTR-3B. The facility is similar to the collection of late fees for GSTR-3B, which is also calculated after filing of GSTR-3B and collected in subsequent GSTR-3B period.
The detailed breakup of interest computation can be verified from the System Generated GSTR 3B PDF, which can be accessed through the following navigation path:

Due to some technical glitch for few taxpayers interest for Feb-2026 period appearing in Table 5.1 of March-2026 period may have been calculated incorrectly without providing benefit of the minimum cash balance available in the Electronic Cash Ledger as per the proviso to Rule 88B(1) of the CGST Rules, 2017. In case any taxpayer observes any discrepancy in the system calculated interest, an option to recompute interest is available on GST Portal.

The taxpayer may click on the “RE-COMPUTE INTEREST” button provided under Table 5.1 of GSTR 3B. Upon clicking this option, the system recalculates the interest based on the latest and updated parameters available in the system and the revised interest amount will then be reflected in the updated system generated GSTR-3B PDF.

Taxpayers are advised to refer to the updated GSTR-3B system generated PDF for the revised interest values and accordingly, update the interest figures in Table 5.1 by manually editing the already auto populated values in Table 5.1. The revised interest will also be visible on hover of respective field in Table 5.1 of GSTR-3B. Kindly note that the manually edited interest value shall not be less than the recomputed interest appearing in system generated GSTR-3B pdf.

(Source: GSTN Advisory dated 16.04.2026)

Introduction of IMS Offline Tool on GST Portal

The Invoice Management System (IMS) was introduced on the GST portal from the October 2024 tax period enabling the taxpayers to take actions on invoices uploaded by their suppliers through GSTR-1, GSTR-1A, or IFF, including accepting, rejecting, or keeping such records pending in the system.
To continuously enhance the taxpayer convenience and facilitate ease of compliance, an IMS Offline Tool has now been introduced in the GST system. The said offline tool is based on MS excel making it easy to use by the taxpayers and it enables them to undertake actions on both individual as well as bulk invoices in an efficient manner.

Steps to use the IMS offline tool:

a) Download the Tool:

- Visit GST Portal: gst.gov.in
- Navigate to Downloads -> Offline Tools -> IMS Offline Tool to download the tool.
- The tool will be downloaded as a zip file. Extract the zip file, enable the macros through the file properties and open the Excel utility.

b) Download IMS Data from Portal:

- To download data from GST Portal, navigate to Services -> Returns -> Invoice Management System (IMS) Dashboard -> Offline
- Click on Download Json. Save the Json file on your system.

Import downloaded Json File and Validate Sheet:

Click on Open Downloaded IMS Json File in Home sheet.
Select the downloaded file from the online portal to auto-populate invoice data.
Perform the following actions:
- Accept/Reject/Pending/No Action
- Add remarks (if applicable)
Click on Validate Sheet button.

Generate and Upload Json on GST Portal:

Click on Generate Json File to Upload to create the Json.
To upload the Json, login to GST Portal.
Navigate to: Services -> Returns -> Invoice Management System (IMS) Dashboard -> Offline.
Click on Upload Json to upload the generated file.

Important points/validations related to using offline tools:

The IMS offline tool follows the same validations and business rules as applicable on the IMS dashboard portal, including treatment of accepted, rejected, pending, and no-action records.
If no changes are made on the records after importing the JSON file into the offline tool, the generated JSON file will be empty.
The tool provides filter options to filter the invoices based on relevant parameters. Filters are cleared while performing the ‘Validate Sheet’ action.
Click on `Validate Sheet` button, to validate data in each worksheet in offline tool, after all the actions required are taken in the sheet.
In case of validation failure of details on uploading JSON file, an error file will be generated with status as `Processed with Error`. This file can be downloaded, open in offline tool, take relevant actions to remove the highlighted errors and can be uploaded by creating a JSON file again.
Upon uploading this JSON file, these records will get incrementally added to the records uploaded earlier. If there are pre-existing records on the Portal, against same GSTIN, those details will get replaced/updated.

(Source: GSTN Advisory dated 21.04.2026)