GSTN issued Advisory on Archival of GST Returns Data on GST Portal

The Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) has issued an Advisory on the Archival of GST Returns Data on the GST Portal.

The Advisory Read as Follows:

Section 39 (11) of the CGST Act, 2017, implemented w.e.f 01-10-2023 vide Notification No. 28/2023 – Central Tax dated 31st July 2023, provides that the taxpayers shall not be allowed to 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 the GST portal data policy, data for the view of the taxpayer is to be retained for seven years only. Therefore, the GST portal adheres to the same data policy. Hence, taxpayers will be unable to access return data after 7 years.

As a result, the July 2017 return was archived on August 1, 2024, and the August 2017 data was archived on September 1, 2024. Furthermore, this data archiving will be a monthly operation, so on October 1, 2024, data from September 2017 will be removed from the GST portal, and so forth.

Hence, taxpayers are urged to download their necessary data from the GST portal for future reference, if needed.