GSTN Introduces New Changes in IMS to Reduce Compliance Burden, Effective October 2025:

GSTN Introduces New Changes in IMS to Reduce Compliance Burden, Effective October 2025 The Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) has recently issued an advisory dated September 23, 2025, informing of new changes in the Invoice Management System (IMS). These changes aim to make the taxation process easier and reduce the burden of compliance for taxpayers. Here's the comprehensive breakdown of the new change: 1. Keeping Certain Records Pending Taxpayers can now mark their certain records as "pending" in IMS for a limited period of time. This time limit is one tax period (months) for monthly taxpayers and one tax period (quarter) for quarterly taxpayers. The types of records that can be kept pending are limited to the following cases:

• Credit Notes (CN) or any upward changes (increases) made to a Credit Note.
• Downward changes (reductions) in a Credit Note, but only if the original Credit Note was rejected.
• Downward changes in an Invoice or Debit Note, but only if the original Invoice was already accepted and GSTR-3B was filed.
• E-Commerce Operator (ECO) documents – downward changes, but only if the original document was accepted and GSTR-3B was filed.

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2. Declaring ITC Reduction Amount Sometimes, the taxpayer does not claim Input Tax Credit (ITC) on a particular invoice/document. In that case, the government has clarified that if you never took ITC, then you are not required to reverse anything. However, if the taxpayer claims ITC only partly, then you will be required to reverse that part, not the full amount, only partially, the amount actually availed. To make this easier, a new facility has been introduced in the Invoice Management System (IMS). Using this new system, taxpayers can now declare the actual amount of ITC claimed on a particular record and mention how much of it needs to be reversed. Based on this, they can reverse ITC either fully or partially, depending on the situation. Taxpayers can also use this facility if they have already reversed the ITC earlier, whether fully or partly, or if they never availed the ITC on the concerned invoice or document in the first place. This option is available only for the specific records notified in the system.

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3. Option to Save Remarks Through the new feature, while rejecting a record or keeping it pending, taxpayers can now add remarks. However, this option is not compulsory (voluntary in nature). The remarks will be shown in GSTR-2B for future reference and to suppliers in the Outward Supplies view dashboard to take corrective measures. 4. Significant Dates These new changes (keeping credit notes pending and declaring ITC reduction) will start from the October tax period. The last date to keep records pending will depend on when the supplier uploaded/communicated those documents.

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5. Prospective Application (Going Forward Only) These changes will be made available only to new records filed by suppliers after the production rollout of these changes. Old records will not be affected. Taxpayers are advised to carefully check these new features before taking action and filing their returns.