In a move to make filing of returns taxpayer friendly and error-free, the Goods and Service Tax Network (GSTN), the firm that processes tax returns in the indirect tax regime, has simplified the monthly return of sales summary that businesses and traders have to file.

GSTN said in a statement on Wednesday that filing of GSTR-3 has been made more convenient and easy.

One area of improvement is the utilization of tax rebates and making the remaining payment in cash, which was an area where a few taxpayers were frequently erring, the statement said, quoting GSTN chief executive Prakash Kumar.

“By improving the user interface and redesigning the process, filing of GSTR-3B has been made considerably convenient. We expect the user experience will be far better and the process of filing will be now more convenient. We anticipate our taxpayers to experience limited scope for errors in filing returns, save time, and increase the speed and accuracy in return filing,” said the statement, quoting Kumar.

Experts said after the simplification, the tax amount due is visible to the assessee even before submitting the return.

According to Pratik Jain, partner and leader of indirect tax at PwC India, the changes are a welcome step towards making the tax filing process more user-friendly. “It makes the system less rigid and reduces the chances of inadvertent errors. With this, hopefully, the businesses would find it easier to file returns which would in turn increase the level of compliances,” said Jain.

GSTN and federal tax body GST Council have been working on simplifying the return filing process to increase tax compliance.

GSTN chairman Ajay Bhushan Pandey said on Wednesday that as many as 55 lakh GST returns have been filed for the month of January so far, news agency PTI reported. The last date for filing initial GSTR-3B returns for a month is the 20th of the subsequent month. #casansaar (Source - PTI, LiveMint)