The Centre will soon notify rules for setting up GST appellate tribunals and appoint members after approval from the GST Council, a senior CBIC official said on Monday.
Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) member (GST) Shashank Priya said the department is working to expand the taxpayer base and doing data triangulation with the corporate taxpayers in income tax regime. As per data, currently, only 40 per cent of the corporate income taxpayer base is also registered under GST. As many as 1.39 crore businesses are registered under GST, almost double of the number when GST was launched six years ago on July 1, 2017.
Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue buoyancy, which was 1.25 after introduction of the indirect tax regime in 2017, has risen to 1.40 in the last two years. Average monthly GST revenue increased from Rs 89,885 crore in 2017-18 to Rs 1.50 lakh crore in 2022-23. In 2023-24, the average revenue stands at Rs 1.69 lakh crore per month. “We are not following a Big Bang approach, we are working in a calibrated manner. We are in the process of taking more trade-friendly steps,” Priya said. “We are in the process of notifying the rules after approval of the Council. We will have to set the manpower, institutions in place. We are hopeful it will be done sooner,” Priya said addressing Ficci’s GST conclave.
The council will also approve the work experience and qualifications of members of the tribunal. In March, Parliament had cleared changes in the Finance Bill to pave the way for setting up appellate tribunals for resolution of disputes under GST. As per the plan, benches of the tribunal would be set up in every state while there will be a Principal Bench in Delhi which will hear appeals related to ‘place of supply’. Currently, taxpayers aggrieved with ruling of tax authorities are required to move the respective High Courts. The resolution process takes longer time as High Courts are already burdened with backlog of cases and do not have a specialised bench to deal with GST cases.
Setting up of state and national-level benches would pave the way for faster dispute resolution. Priya said there are some businesses who have misused the registration process and now the CBIC is working to tighten the registration process and use information technology to catch fraudsters. He said 45,000 fake GST registration involving evasion of Rs 13,900 crore is under scanner in the ongoing two month long drive by central and state tax officers to catch fake registration. The officers have also blocked wrongful availment of ITC worth Rs 1,430 crore.
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