Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) has unveiled a simple excel based template that will facilitate the taxpayers in preparing and filing their monthly returns with maximum ease and minimal cost.
The excel template was a part of GST Council’s approach to make tax compliance highly easy and convenient for taxpayers and also reduce the time of compliance to improve ease of doing business, a statement said. This excel workbook template could be freely downloaded from the GST common portal (www.gst.gov.in), and could be used by taxpayers to collate all invoice related data on a regular basis. The Excel format could be used by businesses to start maintaining their data. The taxpayer could prepare the details of his outward supply on weekly or any other suitable regular interval which could then be uploaded on GST portal on or before the 10th of subsequent month.
The GSTR1 excel template workbook could be used to prepare the data for GSTR1 return without connecting to internet in offline mode. This also benefits taxpayers in remote areas where Internet connectivity might not be good.
The template comprises of eight worksheets. Summary of key values in each worksheet had been provided at the top to help taxpayers easily reconcile the data entered in the worksheets with that recorded in his accounting system and books to accurately prepare the return.
Based on data entered in the Excel sheet, offline tool would prepare a file which would have to be uploaded by the taxpayer on GST portal to create GSTR-1. Only while uploading the file on the GST portal, Internet connectivity would be required, the statement said.
