Service providers for the Goods and Services Tax (GST), who will offer taxpayers the technological solutions to file GST returns, as well as companies offering other value-added services have welcomed the decision by the GST Council on Sunday of extending the timeline for filing of tax returns by two months.

Following concerns raised by the trade and industry, the GST Council said that taxpayers need to file only simple returns comprising a summary of outward and inward supplies for July and August, while the invoice-based details can be filed from September.

ET had reported last week that GST Suvidha Providers (GSPs) had urged the GST Network, the nodal agency in charge of the IT infrastructure and services for GST implementation, to defer the date for filing of invoices by at least a month from August to September, so as to allow GSPs to carry out testing and security compliance given the delay in opening of APIs (application programming interface).

“This is a very welcome mo ve. GSPs had requested for an extension by at least a month, and the extension of two months will be extremely helpful for us to be prepared with our systems for tax filings,“ said Vinod Tambi, COO at Excellon Software, a sales and distribution management software provider, which is a GSP.

Other service providers also said that this move will help GSPs be better prepared for the GST rollout. “It will give the industry the much needed time to align their IT systems and integrate with the GSTN,“ said Abhishek Jain, tax partner at EY India, which is also a GSP . The extension in filing is expected to particularly help the industry as whole, especially small taxpayers in compliance. “Extension of GST filing comes as a relief for the large SME and MSME segment,“ said Ankit Agarwal, MD, Alankit, another shortlisted GSP.