In an effort to ease the GST compliance for over 12 lakh registered taxpayers, the government has provided the facility of filing the NIL statement of GSTR-1 form through SMS, from July 2020. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) said that the filing of NIL statement in GSTR-1 form would substantially improve ease of GST compliance, according to the Ministry of Finance. At present, the taxpayers have to go through a cumbersome process of logging into their account on the common portal and then file the statement. The government also informed that the status confirmation of the filed statement or return application can be tracked on the GST Portal by logging into the GSTIN account.
How to fill NIL GSTR-1 form through SMS?
The government has issued guidelines to fill the NIL GSTR-1 form through SMS. It said to initiate the SMS facility, the taxpayers need to send SMS to 14409 as NIL<space>R1<space>GSTIN number<space>Tax period (in MMYYYY). For instance: NIL R1 09XXXXXXXXXXXZC 042020 (for monthly return of April 2020) or NIL R1 09XXXXXXXXXXXZC 062020 (for quarterly return of April-June 2020).
After sending the above message, the taxpayers will get a six-digit code with validity up to 30 minutes. Hereafter, to confirm their NIL statement filing, the taxpayers need to send: CNF<space>R1<space> CODE to 14409. On successful code validation, the return will be filed and taxpayers will receive an acknowledgement number through SMS.
Meanwhile, as the filing of NIL GSTR-1 form will commence from the first week of July, the facility to file NIL monthly GSTR-3B return is already in the process since June 8, 2020. To fill the NIL return in FORM GSTR-3B, taxpayers need to send similar SMS, only they need to use 3B instead of R1 in their SMS to 14409.
