Wholesale trade · Ranchi, Jharkhand
A trader fourteen months behind on GST returns
A Ranchi hardware wholesaler had stopped filing after a staff departure and was facing a blocked GSTIN and accumulating late fees.
- Returns outstanding
- 28
- Brought current in
- 6 weeks
- Input credit recovered
- ₹4.1 lakh
The situation
The business had filed regularly until the accountant who handled it left. Nobody picked the work up, and by the time the proprietor noticed, GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B were fourteen months behind. The portal had blocked the current period's GSTR-1 because the previous GSTR-3B was unfiled, so the backlog was self-reinforcing. Two long-standing customers had stopped ordering because their input credit was not appearing.
What we found
The purchase records were intact but had never been reconciled against GSTR-2B, so a substantial amount of input tax credit had gone unclaimed. Because GST returns cannot be revised, the credit had to be claimed in the current period, and the deadline for claiming credit for the earliest of those months was weeks away. Two suppliers had themselves not filed, which meant that portion was simply not recoverable.
What we did
- 1
Reconstructed the sales register month by month from invoices and bank credits, and reconciled purchases against GSTR-2B to establish what credit was genuinely available.
- 2
Filed the backlog in strict sequence, oldest first, because the portal will not accept a period until the one before it is closed.
- 3
Claimed the recoverable input credit in the current period before the section 16(4) window closed on the oldest months.
- 4
Identified the two non-filing suppliers and gave the proprietor a written position to take with them.
- 5
Moved the business onto a monthly filing calendar with a reminder that does not depend on one person remembering.
The outcome
All twenty-eight returns were filed within six weeks and the GSTIN was unblocked. Roughly ₹4.1 lakh of input tax credit was recovered — considerably more than the late fees and our fee combined. The two customers resumed ordering once their credit began appearing in GSTR-2B. The credit lost to the two non-filing suppliers was not recoverable, which is the part that could not be fixed after the fact.
Services involved
Something similar going on?
Tell us what has happened. We will work out what the actual position is before quoting anything — and a backlog is nearly always cheaper to fix than to leave.