The GST Council, in its 28th meeting held on 21 July 2018 under the chairmanship of the Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, approved a new and simplified GST return system along with the necessary changes in law to improve ease of compliance for taxpayers, particularly small businesses. The Council finalised the return formats based on principles approved earlier, with a key change allowing small taxpayers to file quarterly returns with monthly payment of tax in a simplified format. Under the new system, most taxpayers would file a single monthly return consisting of two main tables—one for reporting outward supplies and another for availing input tax credit based on invoices uploaded by suppliers. The return process is designed around an “upload–lock–pay” mechanism, enabling continuous uploading of invoices by sellers and real-time viewing and locking by buyers, which would auto-populate a large portion of the return and reduce manual entry. Taxpayers would also be able to create profiles based on the nature of their business, ensuring that only relevant fields appear in their returns. Facilities such as SMS-based filing for nil returns and amendment returns to correct invoices and make additional payments were also approved. For small taxpayers with turnover below Rs. 5 crore, optional quarterly filing through simplified return formats named Sahaj and Sugam was introduced, catering separately to B2C and mixed B2B–B2C suppliers. The Council noted that nearly 93 percent of GST-registered taxpayers fall in this category and would benefit significantly from these simplification measures, while large taxpayers would also find the system more user-friendly.