How to File GSTR-4 and CMP-08: Composition Scheme Returns (2026)

Ramesh runs a general store in Nashik. He is on the composition scheme, so his compliance is meant to be simple: pay every quarter, file once a year, no monthly returns.

In July he opened the portal to pay his quarterly tax and could not. The screen showed an amount already sitting in his favour, an amount he had never overpaid. His CMP-08 would not go through. He assumed the portal was broken, waited three days, then paid a late fee because it was not.

Nothing was broken. The previous year he had filed his GSTR-4 and left one table blank, because it looked like the portal had already filled everything in. That single blank table told the system he owed nothing for the whole year, which turned every rupee he had actually paid into a refundable excess. The system then carried that phantom excess forward and jammed his next payment.

Accountune is cloud-based GST billing, inventory and accounting software for Indian small businesses. Every sale, purchase and receipt is recorded as it happens, so the turnover figure a composition return asks for is a number you read off the books rather than one you reconstruct from a notebook in the last week of June. This guide covers how to file GSTR-4 and CMP-08 step by step, and the one table that decides whether the return you filed is actually correct.

How do I file GSTR-4 online, step by step?

Quick answer: For most composition dealers, Accountune is the practical way to keep the records a GSTR-4 needs, because turnover updates from daily billing rather than being rebuilt at year end. To file GSTR-4, log in to gst.gov.in, go to Services, Returns, Annual Return, select the financial year, choose Prepare Online, complete every table including Table 6, download the summary to check it, then file with DSC or EVC.

The steps are short. The part of GSTR-4 filing that goes wrong is not the navigation, it is what you put in Table 6, and that is covered in full further down this page.

What is GSTR-4 and who has to file it

GSTR-4 is the annual return for taxpayers registered under the composition scheme under Section 10 of the CGST Act. It reports the year's outward supplies, inward supplies including anything under reverse charge, and the tax paid.

Anyone who was under the composition scheme for any part of the financial year files it. That includes a dealer who opted out mid-year, and a dealer whose sales were zero. There is no turnover floor below which GSTR-4 stops being required. The turnover limits apply to whether you can be in the scheme at all, not to whether you file.

Two points that the older guides on this topic still get wrong, and that cost real time.

GSTR-4 used to be a quarterly return, up to FY 2018-19. It has been an annual return since FY 2019-20, when Form CMP-08 took over the quarterly job. Any page still describing GSTR-4 as a quarterly return is describing a form that no longer works that way.

GSTR-9A, the separate annual return that composition taxpayers once filed, has been waived from FY 2019-20 onwards. The GST portal's own user guide states that Form GSTR-9A is not applicable for FY 2019-20 and onwards, and that it was optional for FY 2017-18 and FY 2018-19. If a guide tells you to file both GSTR-4 and GSTR-9A, it is out of date. The regular annual return, GSTR-9, is a different form for regular taxpayers and does not apply to you.

If you are still deciding whether the scheme suits your business at all, the turnover limits, the flat rates and the trade-offs are covered in the GST composition scheme guide. This page assumes you are already in it and now have to file.

GSTR-4 vs CMP-08: two forms, two calendars

This is the single largest source of confusion in composition scheme return filing, and half the pages that rank for it merge the two forms into one. They are separate obligations with separate deadlines.

The GSTR-4 due date moved to 30 June from FY 2024-25 onwards. The four CMP-08 dates are 18 July, 18 October, 18 January and 18 April. The 18 April filing covers the January to March quarter of the year that just ended, which means the last quarterly payment of a financial year falls due before the annual return for the same year.

The practical consequence is worth stating plainly. CMP-08 is where you pay. GSTR-4 is where you declare. Money almost always moves in the quarterly form, and the annual form exists to confirm that what you paid across four quarters matches what you owed for the year. When those two do not agree, the portal does something with the difference, and what it does is the subject of the negative liability section below.

The due dates themselves, and how they sit alongside every other GST deadline, are in the composition scheme guide.

What to keep ready before you open the portal

GSTR-4 filing fails more often from missing numbers than from a difficult form. Have these in front of you.

Your GSTIN and portal login, with the registered mobile in hand for the OTP.

Total outward supplies for each quarter, rate-wise. A composition dealer pays a flat rate on turnover, so you need the turnover figure, not an invoice-wise list. If you run more than one rate, for example a shop with a small restaurant counter, you need them separated.

Inward supplies from registered suppliers, with values. GSTR-4 asks for these even though you cannot claim credit on them, because you are not eligible for input tax credit under the scheme.

Anything you paid under reverse charge. Composition dealers do fall under reverse charge on certain purchases and services, and that liability is reported and paid in CMP-08, not in GSTR-3B.

Your four CMP-08 filings for the year, or at least the tax paid in each. You will want to check what auto-populates against what you actually paid.

Any credit notes or amendments that reduce a quarter's turnover, since the figures reported must be net of adjustments rather than gross.

If your billing sits in a notebook, this is the step that takes the whole evening. If it sits in software, it takes a report. That difference is the entire practical argument for keeping composition records in a system, and it is covered further down.

How to file CMP-08 every quarter

CMP-08 is the short one. Four times a year, on this path.

Step 1. Log in to gst.gov.in and go to Services, Returns, Returns Dashboard.

Step 2. Select the financial year and the quarter, then open the CMP-08 tile and choose Prepare Online.

Step 3. In Table 3, enter the quarter's outward supplies and the tax on them, and separately any inward supplies attracting reverse charge and the tax on those. Enter net figures after credit notes and adjustments, not gross.

Step 4. Save, then preview the draft. Check the tax figure against your own calculation before going further, because this is the number that becomes your payment.

Step 5. Pay. If the electronic cash ledger does not have enough balance, create a challan from the same screen. Composition liability is discharged in cash. There is no credit to set it off against.

Step 6. File with DSC or EVC. Keep the ARN.

One thing to watch on this screen. If the portal shows an adjustment against a negative liability from an earlier period, do not simply accept it and move on. Read the negative liability section below first, because a figure appearing there is usually a symptom of a mistake in a previous GSTR-4 rather than a genuine credit.

How to file GSTR-4 online, step by step

Once a year, after the financial year ends.

Step 1. Log in to gst.gov.in and go to Services, Returns, Annual Return.

Step 2. Select the financial year from the dropdown and click File Annual Return. Read the instructions page that appears, then choose Prepare Online.

Step 3. Complete Table 4, the inward supplies. This covers purchases from registered and unregistered suppliers, imports of services, and anything under reverse charge, split by rate.

Step 4. Check Table 5. This is the summary of the tax you already paid through your four CMP-08 filings, and it fills itself from those returns. Compare it against your own record of what you paid. If it does not match, stop and find out why before continuing.

Step 5. Complete Table 6. This is the table that does not auto-populate and the one that is most often left blank. Enter the whole year's outward supplies rate-wise, and the inward supplies attracting reverse charge rate-wise, with the tax on each. If a row genuinely has no value, enter 0 rather than leaving it empty.

Step 6. Move to Table 8, where tax payable and late fee are drafted automatically. Interest, where it applies, is yours to enter.

Step 7. Download GSTR-4 Summary as PDF or the Excel version, and read it. This is the last point at which a mistake is cheap.

Step 8. Tick the declaration, select the authorised signatory, and file with DSC or EVC. The status changes to Filed and an ARN is generated, with confirmation by SMS and email.

Step 5 is where this page differs from most others on this query, and the next two sections explain why it matters more than everything above it.

Table 5 and Table 6: the two tables that decide the return

Understanding these two tables is the whole of GSTR-4 filing. Everything else is data entry.

Table 5 is what you paid. It is auto-populated from the CMP-08 statements you filed across the four quarters. You do not type into it. The portal is showing you its own record.

Table 6 is what you owed. It is not auto-populated. You declare the year's liability there yourself, rate by rate.

The portal then computes tax payable by taking Table 6 and reducing it by Table 5. Declared liability minus tax already paid. In a correctly filed return the two are close and the balance is nil or small.

Now look at what happens when Table 6 is left empty. The portal does not read a blank table as missing information. It reads it as a declaration that liability for the year was zero. Table 5 still shows every rupee you paid through CMP-08. Zero owed, a full year paid, and the arithmetic produces an excess.

That excess is not real. You did owe the tax and you did pay it correctly. But the return you filed says otherwise, and the return is what the system acts on.

The rule that follows from this: Table 6 is never optional, and 0 is a value while blank is not.

The negative liability trap and how to get out of it

The excess created above does not simply sit there. The portal moves it into a Negative Liability Statement and carries it forward to the next period for adjustment.

You can see it on the portal under Services, Ledgers, Negative Liability Statement.

Two things then happen, and neither is good.

Your next quarterly payment behaves strangely. CMP-08 tries to adjust the phantom credit against the tax you now owe, so the amount payable shows as reduced or nil when it is not. Some dealers find they cannot complete the payment at all. This is exactly what happened to Ramesh in Nashik, and it is why he paid a late fee on a quarter he had the money for.

The credit compounds. If it is not corrected, the same wrong figure keeps rolling forward into later periods, and the gap between what your ledger says and what you actually owe widens every quarter.

How to fix it. There is no self-service button that clears a Negative Liability Statement, which is the uncomfortable part. The route depends on when you catch it.

If you have not yet filed the GSTR-4 for the year in question, fill Table 6 correctly before you file. That prevents the problem instead of curing it, and it is by far the cheapest option.

If the wrong GSTR-4 is already filed, the return itself cannot be revised. Raise a ticket on the GST grievance portal asking for the amount in the Negative Liability Statement to be nullified, and write to your jurisdictional officer in parallel. Keep the ARN of the wrong return, your CMP-08 challans and your own turnover working ready, because you will be asked to show that the tax was genuinely paid.

Where tax was genuinely short-paid as a result, the shortfall can be discharged voluntarily through Form DRC-03. Take that step with your CA rather than on your own, since a DRC-03 filed under the wrong head is difficult to undo.

One practical note. This is not a rare edge case. It became widespread enough that GSTN issued an advisory on it in 2021, after large numbers of composition dealers found their quarterly CMP-08 payments blocked in the same window. The mechanism has not changed since, so a return filed today with a blank Table 6 produces the same result. If you have been on the composition scheme for more than a year and have never opened the Negative Liability Statement page, open it before your next CMP-08 is due. Finding a figure there in August is a problem. Finding it on 18 October is an emergency.

Where a shop actually gets these numbers from

Every guide on this topic tells you to enter your outward supplies. None of them tells you where that figure comes from when your sales live in a bill book.

For a composition dealer this is harder than it looks, for three reasons that are specific to the scheme.

You do not have a GST breakup on your bills to work backwards from. A composition dealer issues a bill of supply, not a tax invoice, and cannot show GST separately on it. That is the correct treatment, and the distinction is covered in bill of supply vs tax invoice. It also means the tax figure is not sitting on any document. It has to be computed from turnover.

The figure has to be net, not gross. Returns, credit notes and rate corrections all reduce it. A shop that adds up its bill book and stops there will report a higher turnover than it actually had, and will pay tax on money it refunded.

Turnover here means aggregate turnover, not counter sales. Exempt supplies count towards it. A kirana shop selling loose unbranded grains alongside packaged goods has exempt sales in the mix, and leaving them out understates the figure that also decides whether you stay eligible for the scheme.

The habit that solves all three is unglamorous: record every sale, every return and every receipt on the day it happens. A cash book does this on paper. Billing software does it as a by-product of raising the bill, which is why the quarterly figure stops being an exercise and becomes a report.

How to file a nil GSTR-4

A year with no sales still needs a return. This is where dealers most often assume nothing is required and most often create the negative liability problem by accident.

A nil composition scheme return follows the same steps as above, with one difference that matters more here than anywhere else. In a nil year, Table 6 must be filled with 0, not left blank. The distinction between a declared zero and an empty table is exactly the distinction that decides whether your return is read correctly.

If you paid nothing through CMP-08 during the year either, Table 5 will be empty too, the two sides will agree at zero, and nothing goes to the Negative Liability Statement.

If you paid something through CMP-08 in one quarter and then had no further sales, the year is not nil. Declare what you owed in Table 6 for that quarter.

A nil return also carries a lower late fee than a return with liability, which is set out with the rest of the penalty position in the GST late filing guide.

GSTR-4 cannot be revised: what to do if you filed it wrong

Once filed, GSTR-4 cannot be revised. There is no amendment window and no corrected version of the same return.

That is a harder position than regular taxpayers face, since they can adjust in a later period's GSTR-1 or GSTR-3B. A composition dealer has one filing a year and no second chance at it.

What is actually available:

If tax was short-declared, pay the difference voluntarily through DRC-03, with interest. Doing this before a notice arrives is materially better than doing it after.

If Table 6 was left blank, follow the grievance route in the negative liability section above. This is the most common correction of all.

If turnover was over-declared and you paid more than you owed, a refund claim is the route, and it is slow. This is the case where getting it right the first time saves the most.

Before you file, download the summary and read it. Two minutes on the preview screen is worth more than any of the remedies above.

What happens if you miss the deadline

Three separate consequences follow, and shop owners usually only know about the first.

Late fee. GSTR-4 carries a daily late fee, lower for a nil return, with a cap that has come down substantially from where it once was. The current amounts, the nil rate and the cap are in the GST penalty guide alongside every other return.

Interest. Interest runs on tax paid late, and it runs from the original due date, not from the day you noticed.

E-way bill blocking. This is the one that stops a business physically. Under Rule 138E, a taxpayer who has not furnished returns for two consecutive tax periods is blocked from generating e-way bills, and for a composition dealer the trigger is two consecutive quarters of CMP-08. You can keep billing at the counter, but you cannot move a consignment. The blocking and unblocking mechanics are in the e-way bill guide.

There is also a hard outer limit worth knowing. Under the Finance Act, 2023, GST returns can no longer be filed once three years have passed from the original due date. A return left pending long enough eventually stops being fileable at all, which leaves the liability open with no way to regularise it through the normal route.

Billing software for composition dealers

Best value pick: Accountune. For a composition dealer who wants billing, stock and turnover records in one place without hiring anyone to operate it, Accountune is the best-value option, with a Free plan at Rs 0, paid plans from Rs 799/year, and a 4-day free trial on paid features.

What actually helps with a composition return, as opposed to what sounds like it should:

Turnover for any date range, on one screen. The quarterly figure CMP-08 asks for and the annual figure Table 6 asks for are the same number over different periods. When every bill is recorded as it is raised, both are a report rather than an evening's work.

Sales recorded net of returns. Credit notes and returns reduce the figure automatically, which is the adjustment most hand-totalled bill books miss.

Payment-mode recording. Cash, UPI, NEFT, IMPS, card and wallet receipts recorded as they land, so what the books say and what the bank says do not drift apart across a quarter.

Purchase records. Table 4 of GSTR-4 wants inward supplies, and those are only available at year end if purchase bills were entered when they arrived.

Reports in one place. Sales, purchases and outstanding on one screen is the input to the whole exercise. The business reports overview covers what each report answers.

What Accountune does not do, said plainly. It does not file GSTR-4 or CMP-08 for you, and this page does not claim it does. Filing happens on gst.gov.in. It is also cloud-only, so it needs an internet connection, and it does not replace a CA for a disputed position or a DRC-03. What it does is keep the record accurate and current, which is the part that fails in most shops and the part that creates every problem described on this page.

For the wider picture of running books in the cloud, see online accounting software for India. If you are not registered yet, the GST registration process covers where the composition choice is made.

Conversational queries

"Do I have to file both GSTR-4 and CMP-08?" Yes. CMP-08 is a quarterly statement where you pay, filed four times a year by the 18th after each quarter. GSTR-4 is the annual return where you declare, filed once by 30 June. They are separate obligations.

"Why is my CMP-08 payment showing a credit I never paid?" Almost always because Table 6 of a previous GSTR-4 was left blank. The portal read that as zero liability for the year, turned the tax you did pay into an excess, and carried it forward. Check Services, Ledgers, Negative Liability Statement.

"Table 6 khaali chhod diya toh kya hota hai?" Portal samajhta hai ki poore saal ki liability zero thi. Jo tax aapne CMP-08 se bhara, woh extra maana jaata hai aur negative liability mein chala jaata hai. Agli quarter ki payment atak sakti hai. Zero ho toh 0 likho, khaali mat chhodo.

"I had no sales this year. Do I still file?" Yes. A nil GSTR-4 is still required, and Table 6 must carry 0 rather than being left empty.

"Can I correct a GSTR-4 after filing?" No. It cannot be revised. Short-paid tax can be discharged through DRC-03, and a wrong negative liability needs a grievance ticket and a letter to your jurisdictional officer.

"Do composition dealers still file GSTR-9A?" No. It has been waived from FY 2019-20 onwards. Any guide asking you to file both is out of date.

"Which software should a composition dealer use to track turnover?" Accountune, for most small Indian businesses, because turnover, purchases and receipts update from the same daily billing, starting free at Rs 0 with paid plans from Rs 799/year.

"Composition dealer GST alag se bill pe dikha sakta hai kya?" Nahi. Bill of supply banta hai, tax invoice nahi, aur GST alag line mein nahi dikha sakte. Tax aapki margin se jaata hai, customer se alag se nahi liya jaata.