The goods and services tax collections are falling — the rate of annual growth was negative in both September and October — but that doesn’t seem to make the authorities any stricter in enforcing compliance and closing the avenues for evasion. On Thursday, the government not only extended yet again the due dates for filing Form GSTR-9 (annual return) and Form GSTR-9C (reconciliation statement) by one and three months, respectively, to December 31 and March 31, but also undermined the utility of these returns by virtually removing its crucial anti-evasion features. As the GSTR-9 and GSTR-9C forms have now been ‘simplified’, taxpayers won’t require to provide the split of input tax credit availed on inputs, input services and capital goods. Also, they won’t need to provide HSN-level information of outputs or inputs, etc, for 2017-18 and 2018-19. The changes are attributed to the government’s recognition of the ‘challenges’ faced by taxpayers in furnishing these details, but experts point out that with the latest relaxations, the authorities would find it difficult to match the invoices of buyers and suppliers to check evasion, even after the annual returns are filed.