GST site crashes, sends thousands of traders into disarray

Mumbai: The Goods and Services Tax website for filing returns on Saturday crashed sending hundreds of thousands of traders into a complete disarray. The GST Council had fixed August 20 as last date for filing GST returns for the month of July.

NDTV on its website wrote that the GST site put up this message on its page: "The services will not be available from August 19, 2 pm to 2.45 pm. Do come back later."

Preliminarily, it was not clear as to why the services on the site were stalled but the GST Tech later said in a tweet that the site was facing some problem but failed to elaborate the exact cause of the collapse.

"The GST site has been working intermittently since 12 noon. It is creating a lot of confusion among traders. Many of our clients have called up saying they can't file returns. If this continues the government might need to extend the last date of filing by another couple of days at least," IANS quoted Prateek Jain, chairman, Assocham Special Task Force on GST, as saying.

Earlier, the government had fixed August 20 as last date for filing GSTR-3B forms for the month of July. "GSTR-3B is a summary return of details of outward supplies, inward supplies, credit and payment of GST," the report added.

The new indirect tax regime requires traders to file three returns every month that adds up to 36 GST returns every year. Besides, the traders also need to file an annual return at the end of a financial year. This means under the GST regime, traders are required to file a total of 37 tax returns.