GSTR-9 Annual Return: Who Must File, Due Date and Late Fee

If your total sales across India in FY 2025-26 (April 2025 to March 2026) crossed Rs 2 crore, you must file GSTR-9, the GST annual return, by 31 December 2026. Up to Rs 2 crore, you are exempt. Above Rs 5 crore, you also file GSTR-9C. Filing late costs Rs 50 to Rs 200 a day.

What is GSTR-9, and why does it exist?

GSTR-9 is a once-a-year summary of everything you already reported in your monthly or quarterly returns: GSTR-1 (your sales) and GSTR-3B (your tax payment and input tax credit, the GST on purchases that you set off against your sales). It is filed separately for each GSTIN.

Why ask for the same data again? Because twelve months of returns rarely agree perfectly. A credit note lands in the wrong month. A sale shows in GSTR-1 but not in GSTR-3B. The annual return is where you put the final, corrected picture for the year on record. It creates no new tax by itself, but it does show up any tax you still owe.

Who must file for FY 2025-26?

The test is your aggregate turnover. That is the value of all your supplies under one PAN across India: taxable, exempt and export sales, without the GST itself. Section 44 of the CGST Act makes the annual return compulsory for every regular registered person, and then lets the government exempt small ones.

GSTR-9C is a reconciliation statement. It matches the figures in your GSTR-9 with your audited accounts. You certify it yourself. A chartered accountant's certificate is no longer needed.

Is the Rs 2 crore exemption safe to rely on this year? Yes. Earlier it was renewed one year at a time. Notification 15/2025-Central Tax, dated 17 September 2025, grants it for "the financial year 2024-25 onwards", so FY 2025-26 is covered without a fresh notification.

Who does not file GSTR-9?

• Regular taxpayers with aggregate turnover up to Rs 2 crore (exempt, as above).
• Input service distributors, casual taxable persons and non-resident taxable persons.
• Persons who only deduct TDS or collect TCS under GST, such as the marketplaces themselves.

What is the due date, and will it be extended?

The rules fix 31 December after the financial year ends. For FY 2025-26 that is 31 December 2026. The portal opened the forms in October 2026, and no extension has been notified as of 12 November 2026.

Extensions have happened in some past years and not in others. Plan for 31 December. There is also a hard stop: you cannot file an annual return more than three years after its due date.

What does the return contain?

• Sales (Tables 4 and 5): taxable, exempt, export and other outward supplies for the year.
• Input tax credit (Tables 6 to 8): credit you claimed, credit you reversed, and how it compares with what your suppliers reported.
• Tax paid (Table 9): tax payable against tax actually paid.
• Later corrections (Tables 10 to 14): FY 2025-26 entries you fixed in returns filed after March 2026.
• Other details (Tables 15 to 19): refunds, demands, HSN-wise summaries and late fee.

Much of it is filled in from your filed GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B. Your job is to check those numbers against your books and correct them.

What is the late fee?

The law sets Rs 200 a day. Since FY 2022-23, Notification 07/2023-Central Tax has cut it for smaller businesses. The notification gives the central half, and the State law charges an equal amount, so the combined figures are:

If you must file GSTR-9C as well, the clock stops only when both forms are in. Filing GSTR-9 on time and GSTR-9C late still counts as late.

A worked late-fee example

Say your turnover for FY 2025-26 is Rs 3.2 crore, all from one State, and you file GSTR-9 on 20 January 2027. That is 20 days late.

• Late fee: 20 days x Rs 50 = Rs 1,000.
• Maximum possible: 0.04% of Rs 3.2 crore = Rs 12,800. You would reach it after 256 days.

Now take a business with Rs 12 crore turnover that files 90 days late: 90 x Rs 100 = Rs 9,000, against a cap of Rs 48,000. The fee is small next to the tax involved. The bigger cost of delay is that mistakes stay unfixed and a notice becomes more likely.

The mistake people usually make

They copy the auto-filled numbers and submit. GSTR-9 cannot be revised. If your GSTR-1 says Rs 2.6 crore and your GSTR-3B says Rs 2.5 crore, the return will carry that gap, and the department's system will see it too. Find the reason first. If tax is short, pay it with interest through Form DRC-03, the voluntary payment form.

The second mistake is checking turnover GSTIN by GSTIN. The Rs 2 crore and Rs 5 crore limits are counted on your PAN as a whole.

How to get it done

1. File every pending GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B for the year. The GSTR-9 tile opens only after that.
2. Total your sales, credit notes and tax from your books for April 2025 to March 2026.
3. Compare books, GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B. List each difference with its reason.
4. Compare the credit you claimed with what your suppliers reported.
5. Fill GSTR-9 on the portal or in the free GSTR-9 offline tool, pay any shortfall, and file.

Should you do it yourself? If you have one GSTIN, clean books and returns that match, yes, you can. If you have several GSTINs, large credit reversals or gaps you cannot explain, the fee for a tax expert is usually less than the cost of a wrong return that cannot be changed.

Frequently asked questions

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