The window to claim input tax credit for FY 2025-26 is closing, and the date to circle is 30 November 2026, a Monday. It is not a return you file — it is a limit. Under GST law, input tax credit on any invoice or debit note relating to the financial year that ended on 31 March 2026 can be availed only up to the 30 November following that year, or the date you furnish your annual return for the year, whichever is earlier. Cross that line and the credit does not roll over; it is simply gone.
The same outer date does more than lock credit. It is also the last day to correct the year: the outward invoice you reported under the wrong GSTIN, the sale you booked at the wrong value, the invoice you forgot to declare at all. After 30 November 2026, the return that carried the mistake can no longer be amended for that period. For a business owner, this is the quiet deadline — there is no filing to remind you it exists, only the money you lose when it passes.
What the 30 November limit actually covers
Two distinct rights close on the same day. The first is credit. Section 16(4) of the CGST Act sets the time limit for availing input tax credit, and for FY 2025-26 that limit is 30 November 2026. Any eligible GST you paid to suppliers during the year but never claimed in a GSTR-3B — because the invoice was missed, the vendor uploaded it late, or it was parked pending a query — can still be taken, but only in a return filed up to that date.
The second is correction. The GST law lets you amend errors in your outward-supplies return (GSTR-1) and adjust your summary return (GSTR-3B) only until the same 30 November following the financial year, or the annual return, whichever is earlier. A wrong invoice number, a buyer’s GSTIN keyed incorrectly, a taxable value understated, an entire invoice omitted — each is fixable now and frozen later. Because your customers’ input tax credit is built from what you report, an uncorrected error in your GSTR-1 is not only your problem; it is theirs.
Why your GSTR-2B is where the missed credit hides
Most unclaimed credit is not lost paperwork — it is a gap nobody reconciled. The GST portal auto-drafts your GSTR-2B, a statement of the input tax credit available to you, on the 14th of each month from what your suppliers filed, and it advises taxpayers to reconcile it with their own books before claiming. Across a full year, the difference between what appeared in your monthly GSTR-2B and what you actually recorded in your purchase register is exactly where the missed credit sits. The year-end job is to run that reconciliation for all twelve months of FY 2025-26 in one pass, so nothing eligible is left behind when the window shuts.
The corrections that close on 30 November 2026
| What you can still do | Where it happens |
|---|---|
| Claim eligible input tax credit you never took | A GSTR-3B filed up to the cut-off (Section 16(4)) |
| Amend a wrong or missing outward invoice | An amendment in a later GSTR-1 |
| Adjust an under- or over-declared liability | A subsequent GSTR-3B |
| Fix a customer’s GSTIN, value or invoice number | A GSTR-1 amendment before the limit |
Notice what the right-hand column has in common: every fix rides on a regular monthly return. There is no special “correction form.” That is why the practical deadline is the October and November return cycle — the last ordinary GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B in which a FY 2025-26 entry can still be claimed or amended before 30 November closes the door.
This is not the same as the GSTR-9 annual return
It is easy to fold this into the annual return in your head, but they are different obligations with different jobs. GSTR-9, the annual return for FY 2025-26, is due 31 December 2026 and reports the year — it consolidates what you filed and cannot itself be revised. The 30 November limit corrects the year — it is your last chance to change the underlying numbers before you report them. And the two are linked by a trap: the credit-and-amendment window closes on 30 November or the day you file GSTR-9, whichever is earlier. File the annual return early, before you have finished reconciling, and you can slam your own correction window shut ahead of time. Finish the corrections first; file GSTR-9 second.
What it takes to claim input tax credit for FY 2025-26 in time
The work is a reconciliation, and reconciliations take longer than the deadline suggests. Pull your full-year GSTR-2B against your purchase register and list every eligible credit you have not yet claimed. Separately, list the outward invoices with errors or omissions. Then work them into the October and November returns — claim the credit in the GSTR-3B, amend the invoices in the GSTR-1 — and only once that is clean, file GSTR-9. None of it is an afternoon’s task, and all of it competes with your normal month-end filing.
The deadline that matters is not 30 November. It is the day you start the reconciliation — because the credit you recover and the errors you fix are decided by how much time you leave yourself, not by the date on the calendar.
For growing businesses, the amounts at stake in a year of unclaimed credit are rarely small, and the recovery is often self-funding. The one thing you cannot buy back is the time after 30 November 2026.