If we talk about all the major economic decisions taken by the central government during the last decade, the introduction of Goods and Services Tax in the Indian taxation system is the biggest one. Goods and services tax bill is considered as one of the biggest taxation reforms ever done in the Indian economy. The reasons are pretty obvious as it was introduced to replace all of the indirect taxes in the economy with one tax. To the knowledge of many persons, at least now, Goods and services tax is a tax which is levied when a consumer purchases a good or service. Before the advent of GST, various goods and services were charged with different indirect taxes such as value-added tax, sales tax, service tax, etc. It was very complicated to understand the Indian taxation system as there were multiple different types of taxes almost all with different rates & also characterized by several different provisions. This made the Indian tax structure as one of the most complicated one in the world to get.
But the Goods and Services tax helped in bringing them all under a single umbrella. The GST act was applied on 1st July 2017 nation-wide and now it’s been more than 2 years and people have understood this new tax regime well. Still, many improvements are being made to the GST structure and for this, regular meetings of the GST council are being made and it also makes it important for everyone to keep himself/herself updated with all the changes being made to the existing provisions or with the new provisions being introduced. There are many GST news update that will be given to you through this article.
- Stricter scan will be faced by the GST evaders in the country
Now, the Goods and services tax authorities are going to take stricter action against the GST evaders all across the country. The authorities are planning to seek the bank account details of the businesses to tally those details with the filings. This will be just one strategy of the authorities as a part of the fresh efforts being made by them to have a grip over the evaders, which are gaming the taxation system.
For the same, the revenue department will meet the state and centre GST wings & also the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). A meeting of them with the central board of direct taxes will also be conducted after that. The main idea of the GST authority is to improve upon the red flag, which has helped the govt. a lot in improving compliance. This resulted in a rise of over 12% to 81 lakhs returns by the deadline, which was set as 20th December.
According to a tax officer from the department, the authority will be able to know whether the goods have moved or not with the help of the FASTag and e-way bill. Moreover, data collected from the banks will also help the officials in knowing whether genuine transactions have taken place or not.
- E-commerce platforms may be allowed to upload the e-invoice for vendors
This is one of the latest update on GST bill. There is good news for online shopping platforms. After considering a significant relaxation for the online shopping platforms, the government of India could allow such e-commerce platforms to upload the e-invoice for the vendors under the GST taxation framework. We are saying this because as a part of the ongoing e-invoice trials, a specialized set of clarifications has been published in the form of FAQs. The very statement said, “E-commerce operator can request for e-invoice on behalf of the supplier.” According to the experts, the news can be confirmed by the govt. officials once the trial period is over. If this is going to be true, which depends upon the government’s decision, then it will go a long way in providing convenience to the online shopping platforms. However, the business needs to maintain a track of them. Also, those businesses should participate in the testing phase.
It should be noted that the voluntary e-invoice uploading on the GSTN portal was kicked off from 1st January 2020. This was removed for the businesses having a turnover of more than Rs. 500 crore. Businesses having an annual turnover of more than 100 crores will enable it as effective from 1st February. Moreover, Foreign Service providers are required to set up the local entities for integrating with the invoice registration portal.
- Changes will be made to the rules on the input tax credit
At the end of the December month last year, the government of India has introduced changes to the Goods and services tax rules. Under this change, the input tax credit is lowered from 20% to 10% of eligible credit, that too, if debit notes or invoices are not reflected in filings. This has allowed the officers at the level of commissioners to bar the debit of the input tax credit for at least one year, in case the credit has been availed fraudulently. A meeting of the GST council was held on 18th December to device the ways for reducing the menace of fake invoicing and the evasion. However, the new rules have already come into effect from 1st January, 2020.
The notification which has been released by the department says that the Commissioner having reasons to believe that the input tax credit has been fraudulently availed may not allow the debit for discharge for claim of any refund of any unutilised amount. Apart from this, another notification issued by the Centre says that the e-way bill of the businessmen, who have not filed their Form GSTR-1, even if for 2 months or 2 quarters, shall be blocked. The govt. has also allowed the late fee waiver for the entities which are furnishing the outward supply details in GSTR-1 between the period of December 19, 2019 to January 10, 2020.
These were some of the most recent news related to the GST act and framework, which should be known to every citizen having any kind of economic interest in the economy. And for all the latest updates on GST and other business news, keep in tune with Business-Standard, one of the leading business news portal in the industry.