Enhancement in the GSTR-1/IFF Filing – Phase-II

The Goods and Service Network (GSTN) on 23^rd February 2022 has issued an advisory regarding Improvements in GSTR-1 – Phase-II. The previous phase of GSTR-1/IFF enhancement was deployed on the GST Portal in November 2021. In continuation to the same, the next Phase of the GSTR-1/IFF improvements would be implemented shortly on the Portal. The present article tries to highlight the said latest Enhancement done in the GSTR-1/IFF filing.

Synopsis of GSTN Notification

The GSTN has come up with certain improvements/enhancements in the GSTR-1/IFF filing on GST Portal.

GSTN announced that a revamped and enhanced version of GSTR-1/IFF is being made available on the GST Portal to improve the taxpayer experience.
These enhancements would enable the saving of the GSTR-1 details on the GST Portal efficient and user-friendly

Improvements in GSTR-1 – Phase-I

The previous phase of GSTR-1/IFF enhancement was deployed on the GST Portal in November 2021. In that phase, new features like the revamped dashboard enhanced B2B tables, and information regarding table/tile documents count was provided. Know more about the Latest Enhancement in the GSTR-1/IFF Filing - Phase I

Synopsis of Enhancement in the GSTR-1/IFF Filing - Phase-II

Phase -2 will provide the taxpayers with an enhanced GSTR-1 online summary view, recipient-wise summary PDF, and remove the need for SUBMIT before FILE.

Removal of the ‘Submit’ button before filing: The present two-step filing of GSTR-1/IFF involving the ‘Submit’ and ‘File’ buttons will be replaced with a simpler single-step filing process.
Consolidated Summary: Taxpayers will now be shown a table-wise consolidated summary before the actual filing of GSTR-1/IFF. This will provide a complete overview of the records added in GSTR-1/IFF before the actual filing
Recipient-wise summary: The consolidated summary page will also provide a recipient-wise summary, containing the total value of the supplies & the total tax involved in such supplies for each recipient.

GSTR-1/IFF Filing

GSTR-1 is a monthly or quarterly return that must be filed by all regular taxpayers having GST registration. The Form contains the details of outward supplies as performed by the business entity.

GSTR-1 is a Sales Return through which taxpayers have to upload their B2B and B2C invoices.
Only dealers registered under Composition Scheme, Non-Resident Taxable person, and casual taxable persons are not required to file GSTR 1 returns.

The Invoice Furnishing Facility (IFF) is a facility where quarterly GSTR-1 filers can Upload their Business-to-business (B2B) invoices in their IFF Return. The basic difference between these two is that B2C invoices cannot be uploaded in IFF. For more details about the Invoice Furnishing Facility, Click here

Procedure to View GSTR-1 on GST Portal

GSTR-1 can be viewed as usual by accessing the home page of Goods and Service Tax.

After login into the Portal, Navigate to Returns Dashboard and click on the Selection of Period.
By clicking on the Details of outward supplies of goods or services GSTR-1, the taxpayer can prepare the GSTR-1 form and file Online.

Updated functionality in the GSTR-1/IFF Filing – Phase II

As mentioned above, the taxpayers can now experience an enhanced online user interface in GSTR-1/IFF filing with the following changes. The updated functionality in the GSTR-1/IFF Filing through Phase-II is explained below:

Removal of ‘Submit’ button before filing:

The present two-step filing of GSTR-1/IFF involving the ‘Submit’ and ‘File’ buttons will be replaced with a simpler single-step filing process.

Earlier there was a two-step filing of GSTR-1/IFF. Taxpayers have to first click on the ‘Submit’ button and then click on the ‘File’ button to file the GSTR-1/IFF through DSC or EVC.
After pressing the ‘Submit’ button (post submission of GSTR1/IFF), the taxpayer was not allowed to modify the changes.
To remove such difficulties, GSTN through this Phase-II announced that, the ‘Submit’ button now will be removed from GSTR-1/IFF, and taxpayers will now have the flexibility to add or modify records till the Filing is completed by pressing the ‘File Statement’ button.

Thus the two-step filing process will now be a single-step filing process.

Consolidated Summary

As part of the Enhancement in the GSTR-1/IFF Filing-Phase II, a table-wise Consolidated Summary will be displayed to Taxpayers before the actual filing of GSTR-1/IFF.

This consolidated summary will have a detailed & table-wise summary of the records added in the GSTR/IFF by the taxpayer.
Consolidated Summary will provide a complete overview of the records added in GSTR-1/IFF before actual filing.

Recipient Wise Summary

Recipient Wise Summary is also the updated functionality in the GSTR-1/IFF Filing through Phase-II. The consolidated summary page will provide this recipient-wise summary and it will provide details of the total value of the supplies & the total tax involved in such supplies This Recipient Wise Summary will be made available if the recipient count is upto 100, which will cover more than 90 percent of the taxpayers the recipient-wise summary will be made available with respect to the following tables of GSTR-1/IFF:

Table No.	Description
4A	B2B supplies
4B	Supplies attracting reverse charge
6B	SEZ supplies
6C	Deemed exports
9B	Credit/Debit notes

Note: Viewing for more than 100 recipients on the screen not being user friendly, and having technical constraints will be addressed in the next version of improvement

New Summary PDF

GSTN through this phase-II enhancement has notified a detailed summary of the GSTR-1/IFF in a new PDF format for taxpayers to view and download the detailed summary.

In this new format of the GSTR-1 summary, a few tables were clubbed together and made available to the users.
The new summary format has been aligned with the notified format of GSTR-1.
It will also contain the total outward supplies liability of the taxpayer (other than reverse charge), to be auto-populated in GSTR-3B

[caption id="attachment_113991" align="aligncenter" width="674"]

Summary PDF- Improvements in GSTR-1 – Phase-II

New Procedure to file GSTR-1/IFF

As mentioned above, new functionality has been introduced in the GST Portal. The existing filing steps of form GSTR-1/IFF shall be replaced with the following steps:

Generate Summary

Once the records are saved in GSTR-1/IFF, taxpayers need to click on the new ‘Generate Summary’ button. The system will acknowledge the request and taxpayers will then be required to refresh the GSTR-1/IFF dashboard page by clicking the refresh icon at the top of the page. [caption id="attachment_113992" align="aligncenter" width="668"]

Generate Summary - Improvements in GSTR-1 – Phase-II

After successful generation of the summary, the taxpayer will see a new ‘Proceed to File/Summary’ button at the bottom of the GSTR-1/IFF page.
In case any new record(s) are added after the previous summary generation, the taxpayer will be required to click the ‘Generate Summary’ button again to get the latest summary.
After this, the taxpayer will be navigated to the consolidated summary page containing a table-wise summary of the total records added in GSTR-1 so far.

[caption id="attachment_113993" align="aligncenter" width="719"]

Generate Summary 2 - Improvements in GSTR-1 – Phase-II

Consolidated Summary

After the generation of the GSTR-1/IFF summary, taxpayers may note the following changes :

Status changed from ‘Not filed’ to ‘Ready to file’.
Generate Summary button will be replaced by the ‘Proceed to File/Summary’ button.

The summary table will also provide the recipient-wise summary in respect of B2B tables 4A, 4B, 6B, 6C & 9B of GSTR-1/IFF, in cases where the recipient count is upto one hundred. [caption id="attachment_113995" align="aligncenter" width="690"]

Consolidated Summary - Improvements in GSTR-1 – Phase-II

File Statement

After verifying the consolidated summary, taxpayers need to click the ‘File Statement’ button, which shall be available at the bottom of the consolidated summary page. On clicking of ‘File Statement’ button, taxpayers will be navigated to the filing page to file GSTR-1/IFF using DSC/EVC. [caption id="attachment_113996" align="aligncenter" width="660"]

File - Improvements in GSTR-1 – Phase-II Note:

It may be noted that with the removal of Submit button in GSTR-1/IFF, the information uploaded in GSTR-1/IFF shall now freeze only upon clicking the ‘File Statement’ button.
Any document if it is added after the Summary Generation, then the summary will have to be· generated again.
In such cases, the ‘Proceed to File/Summary’ button will change to the ‘Generate Summary’ button and· taxpayer will have to click this ‘Generate Summary’ button again before filing