The GST website for filing indirect tax returns was hit by technical issues on Saturday, and went down for a few hours before services were restored by evening. The shutdown for repairs threw into disarray the return filing processes for some businesses, according to a report in financial daily Economic Times.
Subsequently, the site was taken down at 2 pm to "enhance services on the site", and the scheduled downtime was to be till 2.30 pm, though that was delayed. However, at the time of this report going to press, the website was back on the line.
For a section of business, the last date to file returns remains August 20.
A notice on the GST site stated, "The services will not be available from August 19, 2 pm to 2.45 pm. Do come back later."
"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," Prateek Jain, chairman, Assocham Special Task Force on GST, told news agency IANS earlier in the day.
The last date for filing GSTR-3B form for July is 20 August, which is a summary return of details of outward supplies, inward supplies, credit and payment of GST.
It was not clear what caused the shutdown, but a tweet from GST Tech said on Saturday that it was facing issues and that users would have to try after some time.
The GST portal is experiencing some issues, kindly try after sometime.
— GST Tech (@askGSTech) August 19, 2017
The huge volume of users trying to log in as the due date approaches could have led to the site crashing, the ET report said. It said that earlier in the day many individuals who wanted to file returns talked about the site working intermittently.
Apart from GSTR 3B, three forms — GSTR 1, GSTR 2 and GSTR 3 — need to be filed every month. For the month of July, the three forms will have to be filed between 1 and 5 September, 6 and 10 September and 11 and 15 September, respectively.
Form GSTR 1 would reflect sales of a business, GSTR 2 would reflect purchases and GSTR 3 is a combination of sales and purchases.
For the month of August, the three forms will have to be filed between 16-20 September, 21-25 September and 26-30 September respectively.
The Economic Times report said that the GST site has been going through a 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 taxpayers 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," KPMG India, Partner, Priyajit Ghosh was quoted as telling the Economic Times.
