GST department has issued an update w.r.t. ‘Archival of GST Returns data on GST portal’ , the key takeaways of which are as follows:

1. Starting October 1, 2023, under Section 39(11) of the CGST Act, taxpayers can’t file their GST returns after three years from the due date.
2. The GST portal keeps taxpayer data for only seven years. After that, it won’t be available for viewing.
3. Accordingly, on August 1, 2024, returns filed for July 2017 have been archived and on September 1, 2024, data for August 2017 has been archived. Further, this data archival is going to be a monthly activity hence on 01st October, 2024 data of September 2017 shall be taken down from the GST portal and so on and so forth.
4. Therefore, taxpayers are advised to download their important data from the GST portal for future reference if needed.