– By Rajat Mohan
This year, the government is keeping the route with Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who rightly attributed that the art of taxation consists of plucking the goose to obtain the largest number of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing. Therefore, it is all geared up to increase its taxpayer base, ease tax compliance and catch hold of tax evaders to find the right balance between extracting enough revenue to meet the needs of the government and avoiding public backlash.
The GSTN released a new advisory on February 17, 2023, regarding the inclusion of Negative Values in Table 4 of GSTR-3B. It has allowed the users to show the value of net credit notes in Table 4A. This is the first time that negative values are being allowed in GSTR-3B. This will make Table 8 of the GSTR-9 comparison consistent. The published API specifications are found on the enhancements to the GSTR-3B and GSTR-9 APIs.
On July 5, 2022, the government released Notification No. 14/2022 – Central Tax, which introduced changes to Table 4 of Form GSTR-3B. The modifications enable taxpayers to provide accurate information about Input Tax Credit (ITC) availed, ITC reversal, and ineligible ITC.
Under the changes done yesterday night, net ITC is to be reported in Table 4(A), while ITC reversal is to be reported in Table 4(B) of GSTR-3B. Previously, credit notes were auto-populated in Table 4B(2) as ITC reversal. However, with the new changes, the impact of credit notes will now be accounted for on a net-off basis in Table 4(A) of GSTR-3B only. These changes came into effect retroactively from January 2023 and are applicable from the said tax period. As a result of the changes, taxpayers can report negative values in Table 4A if the value of credit notes becomes higher than the sum of invoices and debit notes. Additionally, taxpayers can also enter negative values in Table 4D(2) of GSTR-3B.
GSTN has once again suo-moto tweaked the methodology for punching data in GSTR -3B. For the first time in the GST regime, taxpayers can enter negative values in the GSTR-3B form. These changes are now live on the GSTN portal and will be applicable retrospectively from January 2023. Advisory on these changes is made available on the evening of 17 February 2023, just one working day before the last filing date (20th February). Hopefully, taxpayers will be given a short extension to comprehend these critical changes in tax filings for January, 2023.
(Rajat Mohan is the Senior Partner at AMRG & Associates. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own do not represent the views of FinancialExpress.com)
