Further extend deadline for filing September GST returns till 31 December, says CAIT to Arun Jaitley

New Delhi: Traders’ body CAIT on Sunday wrote to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley seeking a further extension of the deadline for filing summary sales return GSTR-3B for September till 31 December, claiming issues arising due to technical glitches on the GST portal. The Finance Ministry Sunday extended the deadline for filing summary sales return GSTR-3B for the month of September by five days to 25 October. With this extension, businesses which wish to claim Input Tax Credit (ITC) benefit for July 2017-March 2018 period can do so till 25 October. In a letter to Jaitley, Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said there are numerous technical glitches on the website because of which the dealers/consultants are unable to file their GSTR 3B return for the month of September. [caption id=“attachment_5242341” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Union minister Arun Jaitley. Reuters[/caption] “In the wake of no proper functioning of GST portal causing a lot of harassment to tax return filers, we at the first instance urged your good self to extend the due date of filing GSTR 3B for the month of September 2018 till 31 December 2018,” CAIT said. The traders’ body said this will ensure ITC of FY 2017-18 does not lapse and further to make it in tune with the annual return filing due date. “It may also be inferred from the facts that the intention of the government is to increase the revenue out of late fees income, which is shameful,” CAIT said in the letter. It flagged technical issues in the portal since the last two to three days claiming it cannot take more than 1,50,000 users at a time and is down due to the server. It further said the entered figures are automatically being converted into zero and miscellaneous errors are popping up at the time of uploading. “In such kind of critical situation, a concrete solution ought to be evolved and make GST a dream law and not a nightmare,” CAIT said, urging Jaitley to take necessary action.