GST return filing: Excel sheet format to come on June 25

Just five days before the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is rolled out, GST Network will on June 25 launch an offline excel sheet format for use by traders and businesses to upload sales data on the GST portal.

Navin Kumar, Chairman of GST-Network, said the GST return forms for all kinds of trade/sales, including composition, ecommerce, non-resident taxable person, would be put up on GSTN website by mid of July. The GSTN is the IT backbone provider for the new indirect tax regime.

As per the GST law, a return of all sales or trade made in a month have to be filed online by the 10th of the following month. So if GST is rolled out from July 1, the sales data has to be uploaded on GSTN portal by August 10.

"We will release on GSTN website the excel sheet, from where offline tool will take the data, by June 25. It will help taxpayers to know the kind of format in which information is to be given," Kumar told PTI.

In the excel sheet, the businesses would have to give details of transaction, like invoice number, GSTIN of buyer, commodity sold or services given, value of the goods or services sold, the tax incidence and taxes paid.

With regard to the returns, Kumar said the businesses will have to file it only in August.

"All the forms have been prepared, we are in the process of incorporating changes as per the decision taken in the Council. We will make return forms available sometime by middle of July," he said.

Kumar said businesses need not go through GST Suvidha Providers (GSPs) as the offline tool prepared by the GSTN is simple and businesses can save details on it on a daily or weekly basis.

He has asked industry to use the offline tool for the initial 1-2 months of GST rollout for hassle free record keeping of invoice details.He said the offline tool can upload 19,000 invoices data at one go and that takes half a minute.