Every GSTIN issued in Maharashtra opens with 27, and every active one files returns, including in a month with no sales at all. That is the eligibility test in one line. If your Pune business holds a live registration, the calendar started on the day the GSTIN was activated. If you hold no number yet, none of this applies until you cross the registration threshold. A composition dealer runs on a different track, and a business that has surrendered its registration still closes out every period up to the date of cancellation.
Does monthly filing actually apply to your business?
Yes, if the registration is active. The law does not ask whether you traded in the period. It asks whether you were registered, and a month with no invoices is filed as a nil return rather than skipped.
Three groups of Pune readers usually land on this page. A regular taxpayer files GSTR-1 for outward supplies and GSTR-3B for the summary and the payment. A taxpayer on the QRMP option files GSTR-1 quarterly while paying tax every month. A composition dealer files CMP-08 through the year and GSTR-4 once at the end of it.
Two situations do not belong here at all. A business still below the registration threshold has nothing to file, and a professional holding only a profession tax enrolment with no GST number has a different obligation altogether. We would rather say that plainly than sell a monthly retainer nobody needs.
What goes wrong when a GSTIN falls behind?
The fee starts the day after the due date and runs per day, per return. That is ₹50 a day on a regular return and ₹20 a day on a nil one, with interest at 18 percent a year on the tax actually owed. The daily fee is capped. The interest is not.
Then the system reacts around you. Your invoices stop appearing in your buyers' GSTR-2B, so a Kharadi client chasing credit often calls before the department does. Keep missing returns and the registration itself is exposed to suspension, and a suspended number cannot legally carry tax on the next invoice you raise.
When a notice does come, it comes from a named office. Which office that is depends on an allotment made at registration rather than on anything you choose afterwards.
Which return is due when, and what does slipping cost?
| Return | Who files it | Due date | Late fee a day |
|---|---|---|---|
| GSTR-1, monthly | Regular taxpayer | 11th of the next month | ₹50, or ₹20 when nil |
| GSTR-3B | Regular taxpayer | 20th of the next month | ₹50, or ₹20 when nil |
| GSTR-4 | Composition dealer | 30 April after the year ends | ₹50 |
| GSTR-9 | Regular taxpayer above the annual threshold | 31 December after the year ends | ₹200 |
Two cautions on that table. The cap applies per return, so three neglected months are three separate caps and not one. And the QRMP option turns the GSTR-1 row quarterly while the tax payment stays monthly, which is the mix up we correct most often on a file that arrives from somewhere else.
How does the Maharashtra layer work in Pune?
Filing itself is national. Returns and payment run on gst.gov.in wherever you sit, so a Wakad accountant and a Nashik one work the same screens. What is local is who reads the file afterwards.
Every Pune application is allotted either to a Maharashtra state GST officer under the Maharashtra Goods and Services Tax Department, whose portal is mahagst.gov.in, or to a Central GST officer in the Pune zone. The state side runs six nodal divisions here, Pune East, West, North, South, South East and North West. Nagpur has two, Kolhapur has two, and Thane City and Nashik have one each. Above the six sit Pune Zone 01 and Zone 02, each under an Additional Commissioner of State Tax, with two audit divisions alongside. Jurisdiction on the state side is allotted by pincode, so two firms a few kilometres apart can answer to different officers.
The central side splits on different lines. Two commissionerates, Pune-I and Pune-II, sit under the Chief Commissioner of Central Tax, and the split runs by taluka and, inside Haveli taluka which contains the city, by pincode. Which of the two you fall under depends on your pincode, and we check it against the current notification before we file.
One state levy sits alongside GST and catches you because of it. A person registered under the Maharashtra GST Act carries PTEC, the profession tax enrolment certificate, at ₹2,500 a year, with 31 March as the annual date. PTRC is a different certificate, the employer's authority to deduct profession tax from salaries, and its return dates moved forward by fifteen days in 2026. The city is one of only six places in the state with its own Profession Tax Office, which matters for notices and hearings rather than for the filing itself.
What does the work cost, and what does it need from you?
A straightforward Pune file starts at ₹299 a month, and that covers the monthly pair, GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B, with the GSTR-2B reconciliation done before either is submitted. Invoice volume moves the number, not your postcode. A Baner brand shipping hundreds of orders is not the same job as a two client consultancy in Kothrud, and your CA confirms the figure on the first call.
What we need is short, and it is the same every month:
- sales invoices and credit notes for the period, in whatever format you already keep them
- purchase invoices, so the register can be matched against GSTR-2B line by line
- portal access, by credentials or by OTP on the authorised signatory's phone
- bank statements, only where a payment or a refund has to be traced
- the last filed returns and any notice received, when we take over an existing file
Most clients send all of it in under 15 minutes. None of it needs a courier or a counter visit, and how GST return filing works across India sets out the return formats themselves in more detail.
Which Pune businesses are filing these returns?
Two profiles account for most of the monthly work that reaches us.
- A software services founder in Hinjawadi, exporting against a letter of undertaking, whose GSTR-1 is largely zero rated invoices and whose refund of accumulated credit is only as clean as those filings.
- A lifestyle brand owner in Baner, selling through marketplaces as well as her own site, matching the tax collected at source by each operator against the portal before GSTR-3B goes in.
Neither file is exotic. What makes them local is the officer at the other end, and in the second case a credit that rarely lands where the seller expects it.
How we run your monthly filing
- You upload the month's sales and purchase files and hand over portal access, usually in one go.
- We match the purchase register against GSTR-2B and list every supplier who has not filed, so nothing is claimed that the system will later reverse.
- You review a short working showing the tax payable and the credit taken, and you approve it or send it back.
- We file GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B on gst.gov.in and return the acknowledgements the same day.
- If a letter arrives, we answer the office that holds your file, whether that is a nodal division on mahagst.gov.in or Central GST Pune-I or Pune-II.
Who files your GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B each month?
We file for this city every month, so the questions that stall a first time filer are routine here: which officer holds the file, and whether a credit is claimable this period. A mismatch letter gets read and answered, not forwarded. Our office is at Yashwant Nagar, Near Bharatiya Samajseva, Yerwada, Pune 411006. The filing itself is handled online by CA and CS staff, with a callback within 30 minutes when you want to talk it through. 15,000 customers and a 4.8 rating are the sitewide numbers. The one that counts on a monthly file is a return history with no gaps in it.