GSTR -9 BIG challenges coming ahead.
Legal Requirement
Every Registered person including the person registered under section 10 (Composite Taxable person) to electronically file annual return on or before 31st Dec 2018 following the end of each financial year. It means it has to be file GSTN wise in respect of each & every registration and even in respect of each and every registration in each state under the same PAN India level. Date been extended to 31st March 2019 vide press release dated 07.12.2018 to 31s March 2018 for Financial Year 2017-18.
The government has also notified in its notification 39/2018 dated 4th Sept 2018 the Form GSTR-9 and 9A for filing of Annual Return.
Applicability of GSTR 9 is to all the registered regular persons except i) Input service distributor ii) Casual Taxable person iii) Non- resident taxable person iv) Person paying tax under section 51 (TDS deductor) or section 52 (E- Commerce Operator) Section 44.Form GSTR -9 A is for composition taxpayer.
As per section 44 (2) read with rule 80 (3), every register person whose aggregate turnover during a financial year exceeds Rupees Two Crore, require to file GSTR form 9C as notified vide notification 49/2018 dated 13th sept 2018 along with GSTR -9.
If any registered person not filing the GSTR-9 within due date, section 47 of the Act provides for late fees of Rs. 100/- per day (Maximum of Rs. 200 per day) subject to maximum of 0.25% of taxpayer’s turnover in the state or union territory.
Form GSTR-9 Big Challenges in respect of filing.
1) In form 3B wherein tax payer disclosed consolidated Credit, there was no requirement of disclosure of ITC breakup of Input, Input services and capital goods however Form GSTR 9 warranted total input availed during July 2017 to March 2018 to be bifurcated into Inputs, Capital goods and Input services. The tax payer who has not maintain such details into these categories from beginning require to put lot of efforts to bifurcate it in these categories. Ideally if this was the intension of the government then it should have been incorporated in Form 3B only.
2) One more important issue which has led to lot of hue and cry among the industry is Table 8 of form GSTR-9 which get the value of GSTR-2A as base for allowing ITC to the tax payer. However there is again big issue in respect of vendor/supplier who has not filed their GSTR -1 or not made the payment to the government of taxes, will not get ITC reflected in Form 2A for recipient of material hence it will be hardship on the part of registered dealer/taxpayer to follow up with such supplier and get their GSTR -1 uploaded on site to reflect the impact of ITC credit in taxpayer’s Form 2A. The another issue is that there are certain vendor for whom due date of filing GSTR return is extended to 31st Dec 2018 and in case of normal tax payer filing of GSTR-9 is also 31st Dec 2018. Suppose normal tax payer bought certain supplies from such vendors whose deadline is extended to 31st Dec 2018, in such case the normal tax payer will not be able to get the details of ITC credit on supplies in their GSTR-9 which supposed to auto populated and hence loss of such credit. In case a tax payer has claimed ITC in his 3B return which is more than the one reflecting in the GSTR-2A form then it will show negative figure in column No. 8D. Now it is to be seen whether the system allow the filing of form with the negative figure and this can be known only when the utility comes out and if it won’t it will be impossible to file the Annual Return.
It is also surprising that the government is comparing the ITC claimed by the dealers with GSTR-2A instead of form GSTR-2 return which was never the intension of the law.
3) Part VI of Point no 15 of Form GSTR-9 which require demand and refund during FY 2017-18. It is very difficult to gather this info as it require adealer to bifurcate the refund applied by a dealer into Refund sanctioned, Refund rejected and Refund pending and also ask for the details of Total Tax Demands, Tax Demand Paid & Demands pending. In the times where the orders of refund/ tax Demands are not getting uploaded on the portal it will be cumbersome for the dealer to gather these data.
4) The next difficulty is to submit all HSN wise summary of inward supply which is very herculean task to get it since Company must have bought certain material like printing and stationery and housekeeping from vendors which includes numerous items for which company may not have recorded the HSN wise data entry into its SAP or ERP or any accounting system. Now GSTR-9 require the Company to provide all these HSN wise details which is very difficult. Therefore lot of digging of data from books of accounts is required for getting the said information, which is not going to be an easy affairs in the days to come.
5) Table 16 A of Part V of GSTR -9 requires the company to provide the detail of supplies received from Composition dealer. Now those who has not maintain the data in vendors master in relation to composition dealer then there would be difficulties in getting those details from accounting system hence Tax payer has no option but to vouch for each and every invoice to check whether any supplies from composition dealer or not.
6) Table 16 B of the Form deals with the situation of deemed supply under section 143, when input and capital goods are sent to job worker and the same are not received back within specified time (1 year for input and 3 years year for capital goods). The tax payer who has not maintained this data will require lot of hardship to start working on this data since GSTR-9 require the disclosure of this information as well. As most of the dealers have not filed ITC-04 form as there being extension of the date in filing ITC-04 till 31.12.2018 for the period July’ 17 to Sept’18 how will a person calculate deemed supply under Section 143(3) which is again big question mark.
7) Table 7 of the Annual Return GSTR-9 wants the dealer to enter the details of the reversal made under Rule 37, 39, 42, 43 & Section 17(5) which filing his GSTR-3B returns. However anyone who had not done it in 3B return and now wants to make a reversal will not be able to do the same.
Once can do the analysis of GSTR -9 return in depth, one may come to conclusion that it is merely consolidated of GSTR-3B and GSTR-1 data which is already been submitted However interestingly it does not allow any modification which a taxpayer might have noticed latter on. If value disclosed in GSTR-3B and GSTR-1 are not matching with the books of account at time of filing of GSTR -9 then it arises the difference in value of tax payable and tax paid, then how to deal this situation still it not being answered.
Another disturbing points to be noticed here is that if no new information is required to be reported in at the time of filing of GSTR-9, why can’t the same could have been done by the Government on its own by passing the instructions to GSTN as the data which is government is asking for capturing and summarising the same in the Form GSTR -9, is already available with them.
From the aforesaid analysis, it is evident that GSTR-9 format i.e. Annual Return has certain ambiguities and interpretational issues which requires an overall insight before incorporating the same in the said return simply because, the format mandates new and numerous details which are not reasonably maintained by a regular taxpayer and thus the compilation of the same is a time-consuming exercise. Further, it also clarifies the fact that any additional liability arising out of error/omission in GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B cannot be corrected/ rectified in the Annual Return and the same ought to have been corrected in the return for the month of September 2018. Thus, all the details which are required to be incorporated in the Annual Return would have its origin from GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B and hence, there remains no scope to compensate any inadvertent error that might have occur at the time of filing of returns.
Lastly it can only be said that the forms are published without proper due diligence and without proper preparation and taking into consideration of industry concern will be defeat very purpose Act keep away from becoming a Good & Simple Tax.
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