The Goods and Services Tax Network has issued Advisory dated 04.07.2024, regarding Enhancements to Address-Related Fields in GST Registration Functionalities. 

The Advisory reads as under:

The Following enhancements have been made to address-related fields in the registration functionalities: New Registration, Amendment Application (Core & Non-Core), and Geocoding Business Addresses. These enhancements are based on the analysis of tickets and user feedback. The details are as follows:

1.  Update in Validations applicable while entering the address in address-related fields.

a.   Address is in India:

      •    The fields PIN Code, State, District, and City/Town/Village are interlinked and must be selected from the autosuggestions.

      •    For other fields, taxpayer in addition to alphanumeric values can add limited special characters such as Hyphen (-), Forward Slash (/), Ampersand (&), Comma (,), Apostrophes (‘), Hash(#), Period(.), Small Brackets (), Inverted Commas (“”), Colon (:), Semi Colon (;), Underscore (_) and Space. Other Special Characters are not allowed.

      •    Additionally, special characters are not allowed at the beginning of the entry.

      •    Example: When entering an address, you can input “123 Main St. #4, Apt (5A)” but not “#123 Main St.” as special characters like the hash(#) are not permitted at the beginning.

b.   Address is outside India:

      •    Zip Code, State, District: Taxpayer would be able to enter all values other than special characters ` {}.

      •    For other fields: Taxpayer can enter alphanumeric values and limited special characters such as Hyphen (-), Forward Slash (/), Ampersand (&), Comma (,), Apostrophes (‘), Hash(#), Period(.), Small Brackets (), Inverted Commas (“”), Colon (:), Semi Colon (;), Underscore (_) and Space. Other Special Characters are not allowed.

      •    Additionally, special characters are not allowed at the beginning of the entry for fields other than zip code, district and State.

2.  Proper instructions have been added to address fields regarding input values that are allowed or not allowed for the specific field. When hovering over the icon, taxpayers would be able to view these instructions.

3.  The above changes would not impact data already saved in the system, even if it contains special characters that are no longer allowed. However, if a taxpayer is filing an amendment application and is editing the tab containing address details, the system would validate the address based on the above logic.

4.  The said changes have been made based on the tickets raised, wherein users were not aware of the characters allowed and not allowed in address fields or which fields are editable and which fields are to be selected from a drop-down menu only. One such specific case was when taxpayers were inserting a hash (#) at the beginning of the Building Number field. In such cases, the help desk or support team informed the taxpayer to remove the hash (#) character and submit the application again.

5.  The above changes are applicable to Normal Taxpayers – Regular, SEZ Unit, SEZ Developer, Composition, Input Service Distributer and Casual Taxpayers.

6.  In addition, the field of locality/sub locality is not mandatory

  i.   If the Locality/Sub-locality field is left blank or is mapped to another Pin Code, the system displays the following warning messages: “Locality/Sub-locality does not match the Pin Code. Do you want to save the details?” or “You have not filled in Locality/Sub-locality. Do you want to save the details and proceed further?”

  ii.   Example: If you enter Pin Code 123456 but leave the Locality/Sub-locality field blank, you will see the message: “You have not filled in Locality/Sub-locality. Do you want to save the details and proceed further?”

  iii.   In such cases, to continue with the registration, click “YES” to proceed, and the system will allow you to move forward.

Source: GSTN