The Central Board of Indirect Taxes has issued an Advisory dated August 26 2021 on Harmonised System of Nomenclature (HSN) and GSTR-1 Filing. Notification No. 78/2020 – Central Tax, dated October 15, 2020 had stated that taxpayers need to declare HSN Code of Goods and Services supplied by them on raising of tax invoices, with effect from 1st April, 2021 on the below mentioned lines:
| S.No | Aggregate Turnover in the preceding Financial Year | Number of Digits of HSN Code to be reported in GSTR-1 |
| 1. | Upto Rs. 5 crores | 4 |
| 2. | Above Rs. 5 crores | 6 |
The present advisory clarifies that on examination of the HSN codes reported as missing, it has been observed that few taxpayers are trying to report truncated first 6-digits out of an otherwise valid 8-digit HSN. These truncated HSN codes are actually not available in GST Tariff at 6-digit level, with no corresponding description of goods. Therefore, these truncated 6-digit HSN are invalid.
Taxpayers are therefore advised not to create 6-digit HSN code by truncating/removing the last two digits (including “00”) of a valid 8-digit HSN code. Taxpayers should check their HSN code in Search HSN functionality provided by GSTN on GST portal and with the directory of HSN codes provided in a downloadable excel format.
*Tanvi Singh, Editorial Assistant has reported this brief.