Government Gives Exemption From Filing GST Returns to These Taxpayers
In an effort to ease the compliance burden for certain small businesses and professionals, the government has decided to give a full exemption from filing the Goods and Services Tax (GST) annual return due on December 31, 2025, for the Financial year 2024-25.
As per the notification dated September 17, 2025, the central government, under section 44(1) of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, has announced that from the financial year 2024–25, any registered person with a total turnover of up to Rs 2 crore in a financial year is not required to file the GST annual return.
This decision has been made by the Commissioner based on the recommendation of the GST Council, and it aims to provide relief to small businesses and professionals to avoid additional costs of GST annual return filing.
GST law requires the taxpayers with a turnover up to Rs 5 crore to file an annual return. However, the government has been regularly offering relief by exempting smaller taxpayers, with turnover up to Rs 2 crore, from this filing requirement. Now, the small businesses and professionals do not need to pay the extra cost. However, experts say that the GST annual filing helped the registered taxpayers to analyse and correct any mistakes or unpaid taxes from earlier returns. But, with this decision, the small taxpayer might miss the chance to identify and fix those errors.
Apart from this change, the government has recently introduced an update in the GST annual return form with the introduction of Table 6A1 in GSTR-9. This table aims to help taxpayers report data more correctly and give tax authorities clearer information on input tax credit (ITC) and other financial information, making compliance smoother and more structured. Table 6A1 could help solve the past issues with the mismatches in ITC claims from the earlier years. Due to these mismatches, taxpayers often had to face notices and scrutiny from the GST Department. But Table 6A1 gives a more accurate and reconciled view of their ITC claims. Additionally, it also helps taxpayers avoid costly and time-consuming legal action.
Experts say that the department may compare the figures in Table 12 (reversal of ITC) and 13 (for availing ITC) of the previous year’s return with those reported in the current year. Table 6A1 for consistency and verification
Taxpayers are advised to keep their books of accounts and all the supporting documents accurately maintained so that they can take full advantage of this update.
