The government on Wednesday came out with a simplified version of GSTR-3B, making it more user-friendly amidst indications that it may possible be used even beyond March 31.

According to a note prepared by PwC, GSTN has made the following key changes in the process of filing GSTR 3 B:

1. Tax payment – Earlier, a taxpayer was required to Submit the return to ascertain the tax liability amount. Post submission, no changes were allowed. Now, the tax liability to be paid in cash/ credit will be shown before submitting the return.

2. Challan generation – Tax payment challan can now be auto-generated after offsetting the input tax credit available in credit ledger. Taxpayer, however, has an option to edit the credit amount to be utilized and not to consider the system generated credit utilisation. Earlier, the assessee had to manually fill in the credit utilization amount and generate the challan.

3. Download facility of draft return – A new feature of downloading draft return at any stage has been provided to verify the saved details offline.

4. Auto-fil of tax amount – Taxpayer now need to fill either CGST or SGST/UTGST amount, other tax will get auto filled.

Further, detailed user manuals providing step wise details of the return filing process has been made available to businesses.

“This is a welcome step towards making the tax filing process more user friendly. It makes the system less rigid and reduces the chances of inadvertent errors. With this, hopefully, the businesses would find it easier to file returns which would in turn increase the level of compliances. It also indicates that the Government intends to continue with monthly Form 3 B returns post March 2018 as well,” says Pratik Jain, Partner & Leader, Indirect Tax, PwC.

According to Archit Gupta, Founder and CEO, ClearTax such changes will make filing simpler and faster and reduce manual input to tax payment which could throw off errors. “Several user friendly changes have been made in the GSTR-3B filing flow. Now users can view their tax liability before submitting. And view cash/credit ledger offset available to them and the tax to be paid before submission of their GSTR-3B return.”