FM Nirmala Sitharaman chairs meet on GST simplification

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday chaired a meeting of top revenue department officials and representatives of taxpayers to resolve technical glitches and to simplify filing of Goods and Services Tax (GST) forms ahead of the April 1 deadline when filling of new GST return would be mandatory.

The stakeholders attempted to file forms on the spot and gave suggestions to make the system more user-friendly, revenue secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey said after the meeting. Industry representatives and professionals, including the Rajasthan Tax Consultants’ Association, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) and Laghu Udyog Bharti were present in the meeting.

The finance minister also proposed to carry out a similar exercise in various circles across the country to take feedback and acquaint taxpayers with the new forms. Taxpayers are already filing the new GST return available on the portal on voluntary basis. About 85,000 returns have been filed so far, he said. The new form becomes mandatory from April 1, 2020.

“Commissioner of a circle will call in some of assesses who will file in return and give suggestions. It was also decided that the GSTN [the GST Network] and CBIC [the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs] will interact regularly after December 7 as this is evolving system and this kind of interaction are required for further improvement of the system,” the revenue secretary said.

According to Pandey, representatives proposed some changes and amendments to entries in the filing, credit and debit note at the interactive meeting. “This meeting was fruitful. In some cases they were not aware of the existing instructions, in some cases they pointed out to confusion and some suggestions with regard to further easing were made,” he said.