New Delhi, Sep 20 (PTI) With 75 per cent of businesses waiting till the last day to file August GST returns, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today asked them to avoid last-minute rush for tax filing.

He said the GST Network (GSTN) has the capacity to handle 1 lakh returns per hour, which translates to 24 lakh returns in a day.

"Today is the last day to pay taxes for August. Till last night, about 25 per cent people had filed the return and paid their taxes. So 75 per cent waited for the last day," he told reporters after a meeting of the Union Cabinet here.

Jaitley said the GST Network had no difficulty to upload returns till last night, but when 75 per cent of businesses throng the portal on a single day, there would be trouble.

"Therefore I would appeal to everybody, it is in their interest (to file returns early)," he said.

Since the businesses have a broad idea about the taxes to be paid, they should start filing returns by 14/15th of the next month to have an easy entry into GSTN systems, Jaitley added.

To ease compliance burden, GST Council has allowed businesses to file their initial tax returns in form GSTR-3B in the first six months of GST rollout till December.

Accordingly, the GSTR-3B returns would have to be filed by the 20th of the next month, which means August returns need to be uploaded by September 20.

Over 47 lakh GSTR-3B returns were filed for July and the tally is expected to be similar for August. Taxes to the tune of ₹ 95,000 crore were collected in the first month of the rollout.

Till noon today, as many as 18.41 lakh businesses had filed returns for August. Today being the last day for August GSTR-3B return filing, GSTN has handled over 80,000 returns per hour.

GST Network (GSTN) had faced glitches during the GSTR-3B filing for July, which had forced the government to extend the due date for filing of returns.

GST return filing: start mid month to avoid portal congestion and ensure timely GSTR 3B compliance. Arun Jaitley urged taxpayers to avoid last minute GST return filing because concentrated end of period traffic can strain the GST Network; he recommended preparing and uploading returns by mid month and noted that the GST Council allowed transitional filing via GSTR 3B with monthly uploads due by the twentieth of the following month to ease compliance during the rollout.