31 December following the end of the financial year, unless the date is extended by notification. GSTR-9C is filed along with it. Late filing attracts a daily late fee, and because the return consolidates a whole year, the amounts build quickly.

GSTR-9 and GSTR-9C Format

The annual return and the self-certified reconciliation statement — every part, every table, and what belongs in each line. Free PDFs, no signup.

File	What it is	Download
GSTR-9 format	The annual return, Parts I–VI. Tables 4 to 19, with what each line is asking for.	PDF
GSTR-9C format	The reconciliation statement, Parts I–V. Turnover, tax paid, ITC, and the additional liability.	PDF

A working aid, not the return. Check the notification for the year you are filing — the optional rows move.

Who Has to File

GSTR-9 is optional up to ₹2 crore aggregate annual turnover and mandatory above it. GSTR-9C is required above ₹5 crore and is filed with GSTR-9. Aggregate turnover is computed PAN-wide across every GSTIN you hold, not per registration — which is what catches businesses registered in several states.

Both are due 31 December following the financial year, unless extended. Neither can be revised after filing.

GSTR-9: The Six Parts

Part	Tables	What it covers
I	1–3	Basic details — year, GSTIN, legal and trade name. Auto-populated.
II	4–5	Outward and inward supplies for the year. Table 4 is what tax was payable on; Table 5 is what it was not.
III	6–8	Input tax credit — availed (6), reversed (7), and the reconciliation against GSTR-2B (8).
IV	9	Tax actually paid during the year, in cash and through credit.
V	10–14	Previous year's transactions declared or corrected in this year's April–October returns.
VI	15–19	Demands and refunds, composition and job-work supplies, HSN summaries, late fee.

Table 8D: The Line an Officer Opens First

Table 8A is the credit available to you for the year, auto-populated by the portal — and since FY 2023-24 it is sourced from GSTR-2B rather than GSTR-2A. Table 8B is what you actually declared. Table 8D is the difference, and it is the first number anyone reviewing your annual return looks at.

A large 8D is not automatically wrong. Credit legitimately goes unclaimed — ineligible under section 17(5), or claimed in the following year within the section 16(4) window, which is what Table 8C is for. What matters is that you can say which of those explains your figure. Working it out in December, from a year of unreconciled data, is considerably harder than having reconciled monthly. The method is in GSTR-2B reconciliation in Excel.

Part V: The Part People Put in the Wrong Place

Transactions belonging to the previous financial year that you declared or corrected in the current year's returns — between April and October — go in Part V, tables 10 to 14. They do not belong in Part II. Getting this wrong makes the annual return disagree with the monthly returns it is supposed to consolidate, which is the sort of inconsistency that invites a question.

GSTR-9C: Self-Certified Since FY 2020-21

The reconciliation statement no longer needs a chartered or cost accountant's certificate. Certification was removed for FY 2020-21 and the old Part B went with it — the statement is now self-certified, and the responsibility sits with the taxpayer.

The form works in pairs throughout: a reconciliation table, then a free-text table asking why the difference exists. Table 5 reconciles gross turnover, Table 6 asks why. Table 7 reconciles taxable turnover, Table 8 asks why. Tables 9 and 10 do the same for tax paid, tables 12 to 15 for input tax credit. The free-text tables are where the risk sits, because an unexplained difference reads as an admitted one.

Part	Tables	What it reconciles
I	1–4	Basic details, including whether you are audited under any other Act.
II	5–8	Turnover in the audited financial statements against turnover in GSTR-9.
III	9–11	Rate-wise liability against tax actually paid, and any additional amount payable.
IV	12–16	Input tax credit, including the expense-wise table — the longest part of the form.
V	—	Additional liability due to non-reconciliation. Paid in cash through DRC-03.

Two things to carry into it. Start from 5A — turnover as per the audited financial statements, which is entity-level and PAN-wide — and work down to 5R; everything between exists to explain the gap. And any additional liability identified here is paid in cash through DRC-03: it cannot be settled with input tax credit.

Several rows in 5B to 5N have been made optional in past years. Check the notification for the year you are actually filing rather than assuming last year's relaxations carried over — they frequently do not.

Related Tools & Guides

GSTR-3B Format — PDF plus an Excel working sheet with live formulas
GST Return Due Dates — every return, including the GSTR-1 working format
GSTR-2B Reconciliation in Excel — how to make Table 8D explainable
Blocked ITC Under Section 17(5) — credit that is meant to go unclaimed
GST Set-Off Calculator — the order credit is applied in
GST Late Fee Calculator — what a delayed annual return costs

Reconciling a year of purchase invoices?

Turn a folder of supplier PDFs into one Excel sheet — GSTIN, invoice number, date, value and the tax split in their own columns, ready to match against GSTR-2B. Free to try, no signup.

Convert to Excel

Frequently Asked Questions

Who has to file GSTR-9 and GSTR-9C?

GSTR-9 is optional up to ₹2 crore aggregate annual turnover and mandatory above it. GSTR-9C is required above ₹5 crore and is filed along with GSTR-9. Aggregate turnover is computed PAN-wide across all your GSTINs, not per registration.

Does GSTR-9C still need a chartered accountant's certificate?

No. Since FY 2020-21 it is self-certified — certification by a chartered or cost accountant was removed and the old Part B went with it. The responsibility now sits with the taxpayer, which is why the free-text explanation tables matter as much as the reconciliation ones.

What is Table 8A of GSTR-9?

The input tax credit available to you for the year, auto-populated by the portal — sourced from GSTR-2B for FY 2023-24 onwards. It matters because Table 8D is the difference between that and what you actually claimed, and 8D is the line an officer opens first.

Can GSTR-9 be revised after filing?

No. It cannot be revised once filed, which is why preparation matters more than it does for a monthly return. Corrections to the previous year made in the current year's returns belong in Part V, not Part II.

When is GSTR-9 due?

31 December following the end of the financial year, unless extended by notification. GSTR-9C is filed with it. Late filing attracts a daily late fee, and because the return covers a whole year the amount builds quickly.