Government rolls out facility of filing of NIL GST Return through SMS

In a significant move towards  taxpayer facilitation, the Government has today onwards allowed filing of NIL GST monthly return in FORM GSTR-3B through SMS. This would substantially improve ease of GST compliance for over 22 lakh registered taxpayers who had to otherwise log into their account on the common portal and then file their returns every month. Now, these taxpayers with NIL liability need not log on to the GST Portal and may file their NIL returns through a SMS.

For this purpose, the functionality of filing Nil FORM GSTR-3B through SMS has been made available on the GSTN portal with immediate effect. The status of the returns so filed can be tracked on the GST Portal by logging in to GSTIN account and navigating to Services>Returns>Track Return Status. The procedure to file Nil returns by SMS is as follows: -

This is a good move by the Government to ease the compliance burden for taxpayers having NIL liability and such initiatives are definitely needed to make the compliances easy, less time consuming and in line with global best practices.