NEW YORK, December 30, 2025, 05:25 ET
- Bombay Chartered Accountants’ Society sent a follow-up request to extend the Dec. 31 deadline for annual GST filings.
- Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry asked Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to waive late fees through Jan. 31, 2026.
- Groups cite new input tax credit reporting requirements and year-end audit timelines tightening preparations.
India’s Bombay Chartered Accountants’ Society has again asked the finance ministry to extend the Dec. 31 deadline for annual Goods and Services Tax filings, citing what it called a sharp rise in reporting complexity this year. 1
The push lands in the final stretch of India’s year-end compliance calendar, when companies are closing books, reconciling invoices and credits, and trying to avoid costly errors that can trigger follow-up queries.
Tax professionals and business groups say the annual exercise has become more time-consuming as the portal and forms demand more granular breakouts of input tax credit, or ITC — the GST paid on purchases that businesses can use to offset GST on sales.
GSTR-9 is the annual return under GST, while GSTR-9C is the reconciliation statement that ties the annual return back to financial statements for larger taxpayers. GSTR-9C is mandatory for taxpayers with aggregate turnover above 5 crore rupees, CAclubindia said, with the due date for FY 2024-25 currently set at Dec. 31 unless extended. 2
In its Dec. 29 follow-up letter, the Bombay Chartered Accountants’ Society said recent changes introduced via Notification No. 13/2025-CT dated Sept. 17, 2025, expanded the level of detail required in ITC reporting and forced reconciliations that link data across multiple years. The group also cited dependence on audited financial statements and overlapping GST adjudication deadlines that also fall on Dec. 31, and the letter was signed by BCAS President CA Zubin Billimoria and CA Govind Goyal, chair of its indirect tax committee. 3
Separately, the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry asked Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to waive late fees for filing the annual return and reconciliation statement for FY 2024-25 through Jan. 31, 2026, The Times of India reported. “The forms were made available on the GST portal only on Oct 15,” GCCI director general Sanjay Amonkar wrote in a letter to Sitharaman, according to the report. 4
GCCI said late filing attracts a fee of 200 rupees per day and argued that structural changes to the forms, along with updates to auto-populated ITC data and compliance changes announced earlier this year, have narrowed the effective window for completing reconciliations. 5
GSTN, the technology backbone of the tax system, has separately said in FAQs that late fees for delays in furnishing the “complete annual return” are levied under Section 47(2) of the federal GST law and cover both GSTR-9 and GSTR-9C, where applicable. It added that the system auto-calculates late fees based on filing dates and used examples that reference a Dec. 31, 2025 due date. 6
Other GSTN guidance also says the portal enables GSTR-9 and GSTR-9C only after a taxpayer files all due GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B returns for the year, and that key annual tables pull invoice data from statements such as GSTR-2B — details that can drive last-minute mismatches when vendor filings land late. 7
For businesses, the annual filing is more than a formality. It is a year-end reconciliation that can surface gaps between books and portal data, especially around ITC claims and reversals.
