The QRMP Scheme Explained: Eligibility, IFF and Payments

QRMP — Quarterly Return, Monthly Payment — lets a business with aggregate turnover up to ₹5 crore file GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B once a quarter instead of every month, while still paying tax monthly through a challan. It cuts six returns a quarter down to two, but it introduces a lag before your B2B customers can claim credit on your invoices — a lag the Invoice Furnishing Facility exists specifically to close.

What QRMP actually is

QRMP was introduced with effect from 1 January 2021 under Notifications 84/2020 and 85/2020-Central Tax, read with Rule 61A of the CGST Rules. The name describes it exactly: the returns go quarterly, the payments stay monthly.

A monthly filer submits six documents a quarter — three GSTR-1s and three GSTR-3Bs. A QRMP filer submits one GSTR-1 and one GSTR-3B for the quarter, plus two PMT-06 challans for the first two months, plus optionally two IFF uploads. The government's cash flow is protected by the monthly challans; the taxpayer's saving is in preparation and filing effort, not in tax.

It is a different thing from the composition scheme, which people frequently confuse it with. Composition dealers pay a flat rate on turnover, cannot claim input tax credit, cannot charge GST on their invoices, and file CMP-08 and GSTR-4. QRMP taxpayers are ordinary regular taxpayers with full ITC and normal invoicing — only the filing frequency changes.

Eligibility: the ₹5 crore test

Any registered person required to file GSTR-3B is eligible if aggregate turnover in the preceding financial year was up to ₹5 crore. Four details matter more than the headline number:

• Aggregate turnover is PAN-level, but the option is GSTIN-level. Turnover is computed across all registrations on the same PAN, all-India — see how aggregate annual turnover is calculated. But once the PAN qualifies, each GSTIN chooses independently. A company can run QRMP on a small Kerala registration and monthly filing on a large Maharashtra one.
• Crossing ₹5 crore mid-year ends the option. If turnover exceeds ₹5 crore during a quarter, the taxpayer becomes ineligible from the next quarter and must move to monthly filing. The portal enforces this.
• You must be current on returns to exercise the option. The last return due on the date you opt in has to have been filed.
• It is a default, not just a choice. When QRMP launched, GSTN migrated eligible taxpayers into it based on turnover and prior filing frequency. Plenty of businesses are on QRMP without having decided to be — worth checking your own return dashboard rather than assuming.

The QRMP calendar in one table

Taking the July–September quarter of FY 2026-27 as the worked example:

There is no IFF and no PMT-06 for the third month of the quarter — September's supplies go straight into the quarterly GSTR-1, and September's tax is settled in the quarterly GSTR-3B. The 22nd versus 24th split depends on the state or union territory of registration, the same grouping used for monthly GSTR-3B; the full year's dates for every return type are in the GST return due dates calendar.

Fixed sum versus self-assessment

For each of the first two months you choose how to compute the PMT-06 amount.

Fixed sum method (the 35% challan)

The portal generates a pre-filled challan for you:

• 35% of the tax paid in cash in the preceding quarter, where you filed quarterly in that preceding quarter; or
• 100% of the tax paid in cash in the last month of the preceding quarter, where you filed monthly in that preceding quarter.

Note that both are based on cash paid, not total liability — the credit-funded portion is excluded. The attraction is a safe harbour: per CBIC Circular 143/13/2020-GST, if you deposit the pre-filled amount by the due date and file the quarterly GSTR-3B on time, no interest arises on the monthly instalments even if your actual liability for those months turned out to be higher. Interest and late fee can still apply if the quarterly return itself is filed late.

Self-assessment method

You compute the month's actual liability, net of the input tax credit available to you, and pay that. This is the right choice when the fixed sum would materially overpay — a seasonal business coming off a strong quarter, or one whose sales have dropped. It is also the only sensible choice in a first quarter where there is no meaningful preceding-quarter figure.

The catch is credit visibility. For QRMP taxpayers, GSTR-2B is generated quarterly, on the 14th of the month after the quarter — not monthly. So in months 1 and 2 you are self-assessing available ITC from your own purchase records rather than from a portal-generated statement. Under-assess the credit and you overpay; over-assess it and you have a shortfall carrying interest.

One genuine relief in both cases: there is no late fee for a delayed PMT-06. Late fee under Section 47 attaches to the return, not to the monthly challan. Interest still applies to a late payment, but the fee does not.

The IFF, and why your B2B customers care

The Invoice Furnishing Facility is the part of QRMP that decides whether the scheme is workable for a B2B business or not.

Without it, an invoice you raise on 3 July is not reported to the government until the quarterly GSTR-1 on 13 October, and it therefore does not appear in your customer's GSTR-2B until 14 October. Your customer has paid you in July, holds a valid tax invoice, and cannot claim the credit for three months. Since October 2025, GSTR-2B built through the Invoice Management System is the statutory basis for input tax credit under the amended Section 38 — so this is not a presentational delay, it is a real working-capital cost that lands on your customer.

The IFF closes that gap. Between the 1st and the 13th of the month following months 1 and 2 of a quarter, you can upload:

• B2B invoices and their amendments;
• credit and debit notes issued to registered persons.

The mechanics that matter:

• It is optional, invoice by invoice. You can push the ones your customers are chasing and leave the rest for the quarterly return.
• The cap is ₹50 lakh of invoice value per month. Beyond that, the balance waits for GSTR-1.
• It is not repeated. Anything reported through the IFF is excluded from the quarterly GSTR-1 — you do not report it twice.
• The window is hard. After the 13th, that month's IFF is gone; those invoices go into the quarterly GSTR-1.
• B2C supplies cannot go through it. The IFF is a B2B facility only.

Opting in and opting out: the windows

The option is exercised on the GST portal under Services → Returns → Opt-in for Quarterly Return. The window for a quarter runs from the first day of the second month of the preceding quarter to the last day of the first month of that quarter. In practice:

Once you have opted in, the choice carries forward automatically to every subsequent quarter until you change it. You do not re-opt each quarter, and equally you do not drift out of it by inattention. Opting out uses the same window, and takes effect from the quarter it is exercised for — you cannot leave QRMP mid-quarter.

A new registration taking effect mid-quarter can generally exercise the option from the quarter in which registration is granted, subject to the portal's own timing rules — see our guide to the GST registration process for what happens in the first few weeks after a GSTIN is issued.

Who QRMP actually suits

That last row deserves emphasis. Under Rule 138E, a QRMP taxpayer who misses two consecutive quarterly returns is blocked from generating e-way bills — as consignor or as consignee. Because the QRMP cycle is quarterly, the block arrives after a much longer period of drift than it would for a monthly filer, and it arrives without warning, usually when a truck is already loaded.

The same point applies in reverse when you are the buyer. A supplier on QRMP reports far less frequently than a monthly filer, so a gap in their filing takes longer to become visible in your reconciliation. Their filing frequency and filing history are both worth knowing before you build a dependency on them — our verification API returns both, alongside registration status and suspension flags.

Frequently asked questions