Traders body urges finance minister Arun Jaitley to extend last date for GST filing to March 2019

Mumbai: The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Thursday said it has urged finance minister Arun Jaitley to extend the last date for filing annual goods and services tax (GST) return from 31 December, 2018 to 31 March, 2019. [caption id=“attachment_4799391” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. News18.[/caption] In its communication to the finance minister, CAIT said that the format of filing of annual GST return is not available anywhere including the GST website. In fact, the option itself is not available. “Under such circumstances, it will not be possible for the traders to file their annual GST return by the stipulated period and as an immediate measure, the CAIT has urged to extend the last date of filing annual GST return up to 31 March, 2019 for the period 2017-18,” it said. CAIT also urged that format should be made available in regional languages. It noted that the concept is still unclear to a large number of traders and most are not even aware of the obligation of filing annual GST return. Moreover, they are unaware that annual return is the last opportunity for assessees to rectify their previously filed return with the department for the concerned year. This would help avoid any denial of the input tax credit which in turn could also be resulted in unwanted tax recovery, it said.