Revenue Secretary reviews IT preparedness for GST roll-out

Union Revenue Secretary Dr. Hasmukh Adhia on Thursday expressed his satisfaction with the preparation for the roll-out of Goods and Services Tax (GST) from July 1, 2017.

He was holding a detailed review of income tax preparedness for GST system at the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) office here.

The meeting was attended by Vanaja N. Sarna, Chairperson Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), Navin Kumar, Chairman GSTN, B. N. Sharma, Additional Secretary (Revenue), S. Ramesh, Member CBEC, Prakash Kumar, CEO GSTN, Binod H. R., Executive Vice President, Infosys and C. N. Raghupathi, Infosys India Business Unit Head.

Dr. Adhia reviewed GST System preparedness of GSTN and CBEC. He was briefed about the software system being developed for GST, training of tax officials and outreach program being undertaken by tax departments across the nation.

Out of 62,937 tax officials, 24,668 tax officials have been given hands-on training on the application software on live system while the remaining officials will be trained by June 15, 2017.

The training is being conducted on registration, returns and payment modules developed by GSTN.

GSTN is also conducting a pilot on GST system software from May 2 to May 16, 2017, where 3200 taxpayers drawn from each State/Union Territory and Centre will be participating.

The pilot covers all the three modules and is being run to give the taxpayers first hand opportunity to work on the live system as the creation of return has become an interactive process.

This pilot will also give an opportunity to test all the modules by a large set of users in real life environment so that all possible scenarios get tested.

All stakeholders involved in the GST system from taxpayer to bank to RBI to accounting authorities are participating in this exercise which is like a rehearsal for the real rollout.

The feedback from the pilot will be used to further improve the GST software.

The modules covered under the pilot are:

i. Upload of invoice data using Offline Tool, developed by GSTN

ii. Creation of Supply Return (GSTR-1)

iii. Viewing auto-generated inward supply (Purchase) Return (GSTR-2A)

iv. Editing of GSTR-2A by purchaser to create final inward supply return (GSTR-2)

v. Viewing and acceptance/rejection of added invoice data by purchaser (GSTR-1A)

vi. Viewing System generated GSTR-3, payment of taxes using net banking and submission of GSTR-3.

vii. Creation of bank scroll by Banks and RBI,

viii. Reconciliation of payment by Accounting Authorities with data received from Banks and RBI

Dr. Adhia also reviewed the progress on enrollment of existing taxpayers. As on 30th April 2017, when Phase-1 of enrollment was closed, 60.5 lakh taxpayers out of 84 lakh had enrolled.

The enrollment window will be re-opened for 15 days from 1st June,2017 to give another opportunity to taxpayers to enroll.

-ANI