What Is the Time Limit to Claim ITC Under GST?

Under Section 16(4) of the CGST Act, 2017, input tax credit on an invoice or debit note must be claimed by one of two dates, 30 November following the end of the relevant financial year and the date of filing the annual return in Form GSTR-9, whichever falls earlier. The two dates operate independently. The limit runs by financial year, not as a rolling period from the invoice date. Credit not taken within the limit lapses, and the CGST Act contains no power to condone the delay.

Section 16(4) states the bar in these words:

A registered person "shall not be entitled to take input tax credit in respect of any invoice or debit note for supply of goods or services or both after the thirtieth day of November following the end of financial year to which such invoice or debit note pertains or furnishing of the relevant annual return, whichever is earlier".

In this wording, the provision restricts the document rather than the supply, and the second date is furnishing, which is the day the return is filed; both points are often misread.

Section 16(1) entitles a registered person to take credit of input tax on supplies used in the course or furtherance of business, and provides that "the said amount shall be credited to the electronic credit ledger of such person". Taking credit is the act of entering it in the ledger. The time limit in Section 16(4) is a limit on that act. Nothing in it affects the separate question of when a credit already in the ledger may be used, which Section 49(4) governs on its own conditions.

Credit on an invoice dated 12 August 2025, and the effect of an early GSTR-9

A tax invoice is dated 12 August 2025 and charges GST of ₹26,400. The goods are received on 20 August 2025. The recipient files Form GSTR-3B monthly.

• The invoice falls in FY 2025-26, the year running from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026.
• The credit is missed in the August 2025 GSTR-3B, and in every return through March 2026.
• It can still be taken in any later GSTR-3B. The last monthly return in which it can be taken is the return for October 2026, and whatever the period, that return must be furnished on or before 30 November 2026.
• Report it as eligible credit at Table 4 of GSTR-3B, in Table 4(A), for the period in which it is taken.
• If Form GSTR-9 for FY 2025-26 is furnished on 5 September 2026, the ₹26,400 lapses on 5 September 2026 and is not available on 30 November 2026.

For quarterly filers under the QRMP scheme the outer date is the same, with four returns a year rather than twelve, and the credit is then set off under the GST set-off rules.

The conditions for input tax credit (ITC) are a single set, and a business must satisfy every one of them. The deadline is one of the conditions in Section 16; the possession, receipt, payment-to-government and return-filing conditions in Section 16(2) are others. A business that satisfies every condition in Section 16(2) and misses the Section 16(4) deadline still loses the credit.

The two dates in Section 16(4) apply concurrently, and the claim ends on whichever is earlier. The 30 November date is a calendar date, 30 November of the year following the financial year the invoice belongs to, and no act of the taxpayer changes it. The annual-return date depends on the taxpayer's own conduct: it is the day Form GSTR-9 for that year is actually furnished.

• What each depends on: the first depends on the calendar and the financial year of the document. The second depends on a filing action by the business.
• Who controls each: nobody controls the first. The business controls the second, and every day by which it files the annual return earlier shortens its own claim period by a day.

The word in the Act is "furnishing", which is the day the return is filed. The statutory due date of Form GSTR-9 is a separate date, and the interval between the two is often months. A business that furnishes its annual return on the statutory due date has, in effect, worked to that date. A business that furnishes it in July has shortened its own claim period by four months. Reading the second date as the due date of GSTR-9 is a common error on this provision, and it produces advice that is safe in one direction and wrong in the other.

The 30 November date replaced a September return date in 2022

The 30 November date is not original to the CGST Act. Section 16(4) as enacted fixed the deadline as "the due date of furnishing of the return under section 39 for the month of September following the end of financial year". Section 100 of the Finance Act, 2022 substituted "the thirtieth day of November" for those words, with effect from 1 October 2022, notified by Notification No. 18/2022-Central Tax dated 28 September 2022.

The deadline is 30 November, not the 20 November GSTR-3B due date

It is currently argued that the operative cut-off is 20 November rather than 30 November. The reasoning given is that credit has to be reported in a monthly return, and that the Form GSTR-3B for October is due on 20 November. The statutory date is nevertheless 30 November, and a return furnished late but on or before 30 November can still include the credit. On both views, work to a date well before either, because a return furnished after 30 November cannot include it.

Filing the annual return early moves the ITC deadline earlier, and it can never move it later. If Form GSTR-9 for FY 2025-26 is furnished on 5 September 2026, unclaimed credit for FY 2025-26 ends on 5 September 2026 rather than 30 November 2026. The date commonly quoted is 30 November, and businesses miss this part of Section 16(4).

The annual return is a reconciliation document, and the temptation is to file it as soon as the books are closed. Filing it in July or August, before the ITC review is finished, converts a deadline five months away into a deadline that has already passed. Sequence the year-end work so that the credit review is complete, and the last late invoices are posted, before Form GSTR-9 is filed.

The deadline is set per registration. A business with registrations in several States furnishes a separate annual return for each GSTIN, and each return ends the claim for that registration alone.

The financial year is fixed by the date on the document, not by when the recipient found it or recorded it. An invoice dated 31 March 2026 belongs to FY 2025-26, with a deadline of 30 November 2026; an invoice dated 1 April 2026 belongs to FY 2026-27, with a deadline a full year later.

A March invoice found in a later reconciliation is urgent and an April invoice from the same batch is not, because the one day between 31 March and 1 April moves the deadline by twelve months. Of the nine financial years since GST began, the years from FY 2021-22 onward have a deadline of 30 November, and the four years from FY 2017-18 to FY 2020-21 are governed by Section 16(5) instead.

FY 2021-22. FY 2021-22 is the only year affected by the change in the deadline. Section 100 of the Finance Act, 2022 replaced the September date with 30 November, and Notification 18/2022-CT of 28 September 2022 brought that substitution into force on 1 October 2022. Under the superseded wording, credit for this year would have run to the due date of the September 2022 return, which fell on 20 October 2022. That date had not yet arrived when the new wording took effect. A registered person's credit for FY 2021-22 was therefore still available on 1 October 2022, and the provision governing its expiry from that day fixed 30 November. The deadline for FY 2021-22 is accordingly 30 November 2022. No circular or clarification states this in terms, so a business that took credit for FY 2021-22 between 20 October and 30 November 2022 should have that year reviewed by its adviser.

For FY 2022-23 and every later year, the deadline is 30 November following the end of that financial year, or the date the annual return is furnished, whichever is earlier. Section 16(5) governs FY 2017-18 to FY 2020-21 instead. Each of these dates was fixed by one of the notifications that changed ITC law.

Credit for four early financial years remains available under Section 16(5) of the CGST Act, which Parliament enacted with retrospective effect from the day GST began. The ordinary deadline for those four years had passed, and that sub-section allows credit for them. Section 16(6) applies separately, to a registration that was cancelled and later restored.

The inserted text of Section 16(5) reads:

"Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (4), in respect of an invoice or debit note for supply of goods or services or both pertaining to the Financial Years 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21, the registered person shall be entitled to take input tax credit in any return under section 39 which is filed up to the thirtieth day of November, 2021."

Both sub-sections were inserted by Section 118 of the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024, which enacts them "with effect from the 1st day of July, 2017". Section 118 itself came into force on 27 September 2024, appointed by Notification No. 17/2024-Central Tax of that date.

Section 16(5) is narrow in its own terms. It covers four financial years and no others, and it permits the credit in any return under Section 39 that was filed up to 30 November 2021. It therefore validates credit taken in returns already filed by that date, in years for which the ordinary deadline had already passed. It is not a general extension of Section 16(4), and it gives no fresh entitlement for a current year.

• Years covered: FY 2017-18, FY 2018-19, FY 2019-20 and FY 2020-21. The list is exhaustive.
• The test: the credit must have been taken in a return under Section 39 filed on or before 30 November 2021.
• The instrument: Section 118 of the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024, Act No. 15 of 2024, assented on 16 August 2024.
• Retrospective effect: from 1 July 2017, in the enacting words of Section 118 itself.
• Commencement of Section 118: 27 September 2024, under Notification No. 17/2024-Central Tax.

Section 16(6) covers a cancelled registration rather than a year whose deadline has passed, and it has no expiry date. Where a registration is cancelled under Section 29 and the cancellation is later revoked, credit that was not already time-barred on the date of the cancellation order becomes available again.

• The condition: on the date of the cancellation order, availment of the credit must not already have been restricted by Section 16(4).
• The period: a return filed up to 30 November following the financial year, or the annual return, whichever is earlier; or a return for the period from cancellation to the revocation order, filed within thirty days of that order. Whichever of those is later applies.

Revocation of cancellation is a separate procedure from the credit entitlement in Section 16(6).

The rectification procedure under Notification No. 22/2024-Central Tax ended in April 2025

Some businesses had already received demand orders denying credit under Section 16(4) before these sub-sections were enacted. A special procedure was notified for them, under Section 148 of the CGST Act, by Notification No. 22/2024-Central Tax dated 8 October 2024. It let a person apply for rectification of an order under Section 73, 74, 107 or 108. Four conditions had to hold together: the demand had to be for credit denied under Section 16(4); that credit had to have become available under Section 16(5) or 16(6); no appeal could have been filed against the order; and the application had to be made within the period the notification gave.

The notification gave six months from 8 October 2024, so the period for that procedure expired on or about 8 April 2025. A rectification application filed today is not one the portal will accept, and any description of the procedure in the present tense describes a period that expired in April 2025.

The expiry of that period did not end the entitlement: Section 16(5) and Section 16(6) are provisions of the Act, and the expiry of a procedural period notified under Section 148 does not repeal them. For a person against whom such a demand is still outstanding, the remaining remedy is an appeal on the merits where limitation still permits one.

Section 150 of the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024 bars a refund. It provides that "no refund shall be made of all the tax paid or the input tax credit reversed, which would not have been so paid, or not reversed, had section 118 been in force at all material times". A business that paid the demand or reversed the credit before the amendment does not get it refunded.

CBIC's Circular No. 237/31/2024-GST of 15 October 2024, as amended by its corrigendum of 25 October 2024, states one exception to that bar: the restriction does not apply to an amount paid as pre-deposit under Section 107(6) or Section 112(8) where the appeal is decided in the taxpayer's favour. The exception is in the corrigendum and not in the circular as first issued, so the circular as first issued, read on its own, states the opposite position for an appellant.

A debit note is delinked from the invoice it relates to and has its own financial year. The deadline is fixed by the date the debit note was issued, not by the date of the original invoice. A debit note issued in June 2026 against an invoice of August 2024 therefore has a deadline of 30 November 2027, not 30 November 2025.

Section 16(4) once read "any invoice or invoice relating to such debit note", under which a debit note took the financial year of the underlying invoice. Section 120 of the Finance Act, 2020 omitted the words "invoice relating to such", with effect from 1 January 2021, notified by Notification No. 92/2020-Central Tax dated 22 December 2020. The section now refers to the year "to which such invoice or debit note pertains", and a debit note pertains to its own year.

An invoice can be dated on or before 31 March and the debit note that follows it after 31 March, and the debit note's deadline is then a year later than the invoice's. Where a supplier issues a debit note in April for a February supply, the recipient has a longer period to claim credit of the additional tax than it had for the original tax. That result follows from the delinking.

A credit note has its own deadline under Section 34(2).

The document that fixes the financial year is not always the supplier's invoice. On reverse-charge supplies from an unregistered supplier the relevant year is set by the recipient's own self-invoice; on imports it is set by the Bill of Entry. In both cases the Section 16(4) deadline is then counted from that document's financial year in the ordinary way.

• Reverse charge: The self-invoice the recipient issues sets the financial year, and tax must actually be paid before the credit is taken.
• Imports: The Bill of Entry sets the financial year; IGST paid at customs is credited on that document, not on a supplier invoice.
• GSTR-2B: An invoice that never appears in the recipient's GSTR-2B does not extend the Section 16(4) date, because the deadline does not move when a supplier files late.

Rule 36(1) of the CGST Rules, 2017 lists the documents credit may be taken on. Clause (b) covers an invoice issued under Section 31(3)(f), which is the self-invoice a recipient must issue for a supply received from an unregistered supplier, and it makes the credit "subject to the payment of tax". Clause (d) covers "a bill of entry or any similar document prescribed under the Customs Act, 1962 or rules made thereunder for the assessment of integrated tax on imports". Clause (c) covers a debit note issued under Section 34.

Where a supplier files GSTR-1 late, or not at all, the invoice does not appear in the recipient's GSTR-2B. While the invoice is absent from GSTR-2B, the credit is not available under Section 16(2)(aa), and the Section 16(4) deadline is unaffected. Section 16(2)(aa) and Section 16(4) apply to the same invoice at once: the first postpones the credit, and the second ends it. While a business waits for a supplier to file, the Section 16(4) deadline continues to run. GSTR-2B reconciliation each period identifies these invoices while the credit can still be taken.

For supplies covered by the second proviso to Section 16(2), failure to pay the supplier the invoice value and tax within 180 days of the invoice date requires payment or reversal of credit proportionate to the unpaid amount, with interest payable under Section 50. Reverse-charge supplies are excluded, and Rule 37's deemed-payment provisions also apply.

• Payment terms: The recipient must pay the supplier the invoice value plus tax within 180 days of the invoice date.
• ITC reversal: Where Rule 37 applies, pay or reverse credit proportionate to the amount unpaid after 180 days, with interest payable under Section 50.
• Re-availment: The credit can be re-availed once the supplier is actually paid, in the return for the period in which payment is made.

The second proviso to Section 16(2) and Rule 37 of the CGST Rules, 2017 contain the detailed provisions. Rule 37(1) requires the amount to be paid or reversed "while furnishing the return in FORM GSTR-3B for the tax period immediately following the period of one hundred and eighty days from the date of the issue of the invoice". It also requires reversal only "proportionate to the amount not paid to the supplier". A part payment therefore produces a part reversal rather than a full one. Reverse-charge supplies fall outside the rule, because the recipient pays the tax itself and there is no supplier payment to track.

Supplies made without consideration that fall within Schedule I are deemed to have been paid for under Rule 37, so the 180-day payment condition does not require reversal on them. The same deemed-payment treatment applies to an amount added to value under Section 15(2)(b): an amount the supplier is liable to pay in relation to the supply but which the recipient has incurred and which was not included in the price actually paid or payable.

Rule 37(2) is the re-availment provision: where the registered person later pays the value and the tax, "he shall be entitled to re-avail the input tax credit referred to in sub-rule (1)". The rule requires no fresh document and no fresh claim of eligibility.

Credit not claimed by the Section 16(4) date lapses permanently and becomes a cost. The CGST Act gives no officer the power to condone the delay and there is no application to make. The credit does not carry forward, cannot be claimed in a later year's return, and cannot be recovered by amending an earlier return once the year is closed. Credit claimed after the date is wrongly availed credit, which attracts recovery of the amount and interest where the credit has been utilised.

Two separate time limits apply to the same invoice, one binding the taxpayer and one binding the department. The taxpayer's limit is Section 16(4), together with the periods allowed by Sections 16(5) and 16(6). The department's limit is its limitation for raising a demand, which runs under Sections 73(10) and 74(10) for periods up to FY 2023-24 and under Section 74A(2) from FY 2024-25 onward. The two limits share neither a length nor a starting point, and the consequences of a credit claimed out of time, including interest under Section 50(3), arise under the department's limit.

Credit notes: the supplier's deadline

A credit note must be declared by 30 November following the end of the financial year in which the supply was made, or the date of furnishing the relevant annual return, whichever is earlier. Section 34(2) uses the same pair of dates as Section 16(4), so the supplier's deadline and the recipient's deadline fall on the same dates. Since the Finance Act, 2025 the supplier's output tax liability cannot be reduced unless the recipient has reversed the input tax credit attributable to that credit note.

No two-year time limit applies

The limit runs by financial year, not as a rolling period from the invoice date. Credit on an invoice dated 12 August 2025 has roughly fifteen months, and credit on an invoice dated 31 March 2026 has eight. No provision of the Act provides that credit survives for a fixed period after the invoice, whether two years or twelve months, and applying such a period gives the wrong answer at both ends of a financial year.

Re-availing reversed credit

Credit reversed under the 180-day rule is re-availed when the supplier is actually paid. The same applies to a reversal made for another cause, such as Rule 37A, which operates where the supplier did not file GSTR-3B and the tax was never paid to the Government.

The outer date for a re-availment is not the Section 16(4) date. Re-availing means claiming the credit in a return, and Section 39(11) provides that a registered person "shall not be allowed to furnish a return for a tax period after the expiry of a period of three years from the due date of furnishing the said return". A proviso lets the Government relax that by notification, for a person or a class of persons, on conditions. So a payment made to the supplier long after the event does not restore credit through a return that can no longer be filed. Diary the three years from the due date of the return in which the credit is taken, not the 30 November date.