Before a few months the government of India has implemented GST as tax reform, and hence there are a lot of things which are new to common people as well as the taxpayers. The process, registration, slabs, the filing of return and assessment of tax are some of the important issues that one needs to know about. In the past there were different taxes which all are removed now and only GST is applied to almost everything. The GST tax reform was introduced in India in 2017 to eliminate several indirect taxes. It is a complicated tax system which is difficult to understand by many business enterprises. This makes it imperative for them to hire a professional who can help in understanding the new tax structure and file returns. One of the pertinent questions which arise is whether you compulsorily need a CA for filing the returns or you can do it on your own. With the help of online portal now one can pay GST on his own.
To answer the question, we first need to understand what needs to be done while filing GST return forms for business:
- You need to upload the sales transactions to the GSTN portal with the help of GSTR-1.
- The next step is to purchase reconciliation using GSTR-2. The purchase is further matched with the invoice of your supplier. You also need to provide input tax credit.
- The next step is to file the GSTR-3which is the monthly return wherein you need to mention the details about tax payment.
For that one needs to take care of the following:
- Apply the right SAC/HSN codes to the products.
- Update the GSTN of the vendors and customers.
- Have clarity on the correct tax rate applicable to their service/ product.
- Ensure the GST bills have required details like customer’s GSTN, appropriate GST rate, place of supply, and the likes. Same applies for purchase as well.
After this step, the return can be filed in 2 ways:
- File the return directly from the GSTN portal
The transactions can be uploaded manually in each section. This can be little time consuming, and it is recommended only for people who have very few transactions in a month, i.e., less than 100 transactions.
- Using an excellent GST software
Most of the accounting software that are web-based are offering GST filing solutions. While some software requires uploading the transactions from tally or excelling, the others can help in filing the GST returns within few clicks.
Thus, if you learn to create the invoices and bills in the GST format with the help of good accounting software, there is no need to hire a CA. Also, many people avoid hiring an outside professional for filing a clear tax return as they don’t want to take any chances with their confidential data. Using GST software will keep the sensitive data of the company protected as even a slight leaking of sensitive data can cause huge damage to the business.
