The GSTN issued Advisory No. 523 dated September 24, 2024, outlines that, per Section 39(11) of the CGST Act, taxpayers cannot file GST returns three years after the due date. Additionally, GST portal data will only be retained for seven years. Archival of returns has begun, with July 2017 data archived on August 1, 2024, and August 2017 on September 1, 2024. Taxpayers are advised to download relevant data for future reference before it becomes inaccessible.
Section 39 (11) of the CGST Act, 2017 , implemented w.e.f 01-10-2023 vide Notification No. 28/2023 – Central Tax dated 31th July, 2023, provides that the taxpayers shall not be allowed file their GST returns after the expiry of a period of three years from the due date of furnishing the said return.
Further, as per GST portal data policy, data for view of taxpayer to be retained for seven years only. Therefore, the same data policy is being implemented on the GST portal. Thus, return data will not be available to view beyond 7 years for taxpayers.
Accordingly, on 01st August 2024 return filed for July 2017 has been archived and on 01st September 2024, data for August 2017 has been archived. Further, this data archival is going to be a monthly activity hence on 01st October, 2024 data of September 2017 shall be taken down from the GST portal and so on so forth.
Hence, hereby the taxpayers are advised to download their relevant data from the GST portal for any future reference, if required.
The Advisory can be accessed at: https://a2z-bucket.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/GSTN_24.09.2024.pdf