GSTR1 late fee waiver deadline extended but portal freezes for many users

The Finance Ministry extended the deadline to avail waiver of late fee chargeable on GSTR-1 pertaining to period from July 2017 to November 2019 from 10 January to 17 January 2020. The announcement was made on Friday.

"The response to this waiver has been very encouraging and since announcement on 18.12.2019, 54 lakhs GSTR-1 have gotten filed till 09.01.2020. On average, only about 25 lakh monthly GSTR1s get filed. In the view of such huge response, which would lead reduction in unmatched credit, it has been decided to extend the said amnesty scheme from 10th January 2020 to 17th January 2020," said Finance Ministry.

On the other hand, many people also took to social media platform Twitter on Friday to complain about the issues with the GST portal before the deadline to file GSTR1 was extended. Sharing screenshots of some buttons being grayed out along with other errors, users expressed disappointment on Twitter.

#GSTR1 @nsitharaman respected @FinMinIndia ,bthis file return tab is disabled , and it's not active today thousands of GST registered dealers would be paying penalty.Even Govt had given time till 10th Jan , pls respect your deadline. pic.twitter.com/M1nHUapQGa

— CA Rahul Srivastava (@rahul31031984) January 10, 2020

Please #extend the date of #GSTR1 Till 31March 2020.@askGSTech @cbic_india @FinMinIndia @nsitharaman @Anurag_Office @SushilModi @GST_Council @narendramodi @PMOIndia Whole night GST system was on maintenance. And this time facing multiple type problems.#ExtendGSTR1DueDate pic.twitter.com/CWMeD5xovK

— 𝐀𝐝𝐯 𝐍𝐞𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐡 𝐊𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐰𝐚𝐡𝐚🇮🇳 (@NeeleshTax) January 10, 2020

The reported "outage" has also triggered calls for the GSTR1 deadline to be extended again.