GST portal faces technical issues; taxpayers struggle as GST Network seeks extension for December filing deadline | Mint

The GST portal has been facing issues related to filing GSTR-1. On Thursday, GST Network posted an update on X, highlighting the problem.

A message on GST Network’s social media handle, GST Tech, reads: “GSTN hereby acknowledges the issue being faced regarding GSTR-1 summary generation and its filing. It is to inform you that our team is working on it and will fix it shortly. Thanks for your patience.”

Following this, when taxpayers continued to face difficulties in filing their indirect tax returns on the portal, the GST Network posted another message on Friday that assured the tax filers that the problem would soon be resolved and highlighted that there could be an extension of the deadline. The message mentioned that it had sent an incident report to CBIC (Central Board of Indirect Tax) to consider an extension of the deadline, which is set to expire on Saturday.

Notably, January 11 is the deadline for the December 2024 tax period, and for the QRMP filers, it is January 13.

Netizens react 

However, netizens reported that the portal was not working even by noon, as the message had highlighted.

Ajit Patel, a netizen, uploaded a screenshot highlighting that it is 12 o’clock, but the portal is still not working.

Another social media user, Vinay, wrote, “We have a lot of patience. Don’t worry. We have seen tons of glitches like this from day 1 of the portal and paid penalties. Of Course!! Even if anyone lost patience, no one is there to hear. Whatever you people do, that has to be followed. That’s it know.”

One user, CA Arvind Sharma, enquired whether there would be a late fee waiver for delayed returns.

Another user, Bharat Arora, made a tongue-in-cheek remark when he asked, “A taxpayer with limited resources should file a return on time. But the GST portal can glitch anytime.”

Upon visiting the GST portal at 12.54 pm, one could find this message: “Scheduled Downtime! We are enhancing the services on the site. The services will not be available from 10th Jan’25 12:00 AM to 10th Jan’25 03:00 PM. Kindly come back later! In case of any queries, please call us at 1800-103-4786. We appreciate your cooperation and patience. ”