The GST website for filing returns is facing “issues” and services to the website has not been restored, throwing into disarray the return filing processes for some business. For a section of the business the last date to file return remains August 20.
It is not clear what has caused the issue, but a tweet from GST Tech says it is facing issues and that users will have to try after some time.
It may be the case that the huge volume of users trying to log in as the due date approaches led to the site giving up, but earlier in the day many individuals who wanted to file returns talked about the site working intermittently.
Subsequently, the site was taken down at 2 pm to “enhance services on the site”, and the scheduled downtime was to be till 2 30p. However, the site is still not up.
“It is experiencing problems and keeping the tax payers anxious over the weekend before the first deadline is drawing to a close tomorrow. The good news is the Government got the tax, as last day happens to be Sunday and the taxpayers already paid off their July GST liability,” says KPMG India, Partner, Priyajit Ghosh.
The GST site is going through its testing time, even over the return filing of GSTR 3B, which is in a summary format and only of two pages. “One is wondering, is this a precursor to even a bigger challenge when transactional level details are supposed to be updated by more than 8 million tax payers in just about two weeks time from now. It will be prudent to extend the timeline for 3B from 20 Aug to 31 Aug for all taxpayers in the interest of a truly smooth rollout sans anxiety. Load testing is a tricky area in the IT space. Considering the magnitude of data and the number of taxpayers, the Government should reassess the deadline for the detailed filing,” says Ghosh.
Earlier in the days news agency IANS quoted Prateek Jain, chairman, Assocham Special Task Force on GST, saying, "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.”
