Karnataka

Vageesh

Two months after launch of GST, initial glitches in the new tax regime continue to grow into serious concerns. The commercial taxes department – state’s financial backbone – is now in a fix as it is bogged by a fall in revenue on one hand and growing ambiguity in the GST regime on the other. State tax officers say confusion continues to prevail two months after the launch and that things are getting tougher each day.GST Council, for the first time, felt the heat as it faces a mammoth figure of Rs 62,000 crore of pending refund claims. Meanwhile, the enrolment and returns stats continue to be ambiguous.“So far, there is a fall of 30 per cent in revenue, which is a huge loss to state. There are various reasons for this including people not enrolling, non-filing of returns or false claims in returns. There are over six lakh dealers and over five lakh have enrolled so far and seventy per cent of them have filed returns. Nobody knows to what extent the returns filed are correct as we are not able to access it. With no real-time data on hand on returns filed, we are in a state of confusion. With uncertainties, there can be no enforcement, no audit, and the regime is turning out to be debacle. What’s happening inis also happening in most other states,” an officer at the state commercial taxes department explained.Some issues that are bogging GST implementation are the inaccessibility to migration data, non-visibility of transactions, and unavailability of real-time data to state officers.The confusion had recently also led to CM Siddaramaiah cracking down against the state commercial tax department officers during a recent review meet. With a target of over Rs 55 000 crore, the CM was not pleased after he was presented with a 55 per cent achievement figure.“After 2 to 3 months of wait, and with the date extended to October, those who have not filed and adopted a wait-and-watch approach may actually escape forever. This could be disastrous from the revenue point of view,” the officer explained.S, a dealer, says dealers have been struggling to get the GSTIN for more than four weeks. “Even now, online filing is full of glitches. Most times, online returns filing is encountered with a pop-up message saying ‘invalid parameters’, but no one knows what the invalid parameter is. This is clubbed with a poor grievance redressal mechanism. When a dealer calls commercial taxes department, they are directed to the help desk and one won’t get any solutions there,” Vageesh said.While this is the case with basic aspects, uploading invoices is another big challenge.With no clarity on returns being filed and the genuineness of the same, it is also rendering enforcement ineffective as acting to prevent evasion is difficult in the absence of accessibility to online transactions, the officer added.Faced with a grim situation, a national body of commercial tax department officers from across the country has decided to take up the issue with the finance ministry.“There are several issues that need the finance ministry’s immediate intervention. Some include data sharing, availability of real-time information and other serious shortcomings in the new regime. Officers in state are not able to act with non-availability of information on returns filed. Not acting on these may result in a huge fall in revenue, both to the state and Centre. We are taking up these issues with the hon’ble finance minister,” CN Shiva Prakash, Associate President, All India Confederation of Commercial Tax Associations (AICCTA) said.