The 2nd Commission GST Conference of the State Tax and Chief Commissioner Of Central Tax has been held recently under the chairmanship of DOC Ajay Bhushan Pandey, Revenue Secretary, Ministry of Finance.
The multi-faceted conference had focused on brainstorming sessions relating to the streamlining Goods and Service Tax (GST) system as well as reducing revenue leakages. This was the 2nd edition all India Conference in which both tax administrations came together officially in order to build collaboration as well as towards sharing their knowledge and best practices with the intention to bring about uniformity in tax administration.
At the time of the conference, deliberations have been held on a mechanism and machinery for distributing interdepartmental data amongst several agencies like GSTC, CBDT, CBIC, FIU, DoR, DGGI, and State Tax Administration, etc, in order to achieve efficiency in curbing evasion as well as increase revenue collection
Many presentations have been made in the conference, particularly, Commissioner (Investigation), The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) had presented a summary of false/fraudulent ITC; DG, DRI, presented few novel matters unearthed through them, which includes a case having Pan-India operation as well as methodology to limit misuse of refund of ITC/IGST; DG, ARM, presented usage of data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning for early identification of deceitful practices requiring enforcement action in the direction of bringing a focused approach to the evaders without bringing inconvenience to the taxpayers. CBDT and FIU-India had made their presentations on the exchange of data and distributing STR for curbing evasion.
The Goods and Service Tax policy Wing, CBIC, showed ways to bridge the compliance gap and improving revenue, which shall result in recovering unmatched credit, reviewing refunds, management of non-filers, reporting of the electronic invoice to GST system and complete and coordinated audit.
After an in-depth deliberation, the following actions were decided for required action:
1. Towards constituting a Committee of Centre and State officers to inspect and implement quick actions in each time frame to limit fake refund claims which include the inverted tax structure refund claims and evasion of GST. The Committee would come out with thorough SoP within a week, which might be implemented across the nation by January end.
2. Considering deceitful IGST refund claims, it has been explored to link foreign exchange remittances with IGST refund for the dicey and new exporter.
3. Every major matter of fake Input Tax Credit, export or import fraud and fake refunds shall also be compulsorily investigated through the investigation wing of the Income Tax Department.
4. MoU shall be signed amongst CBDT, CBIC, and GSTN towards exchanging data through API, from CBDT to GSTN and CBIC and vice-versa. It has been decided that this data shall be shared on a quarterly basis, in place of being shared on a yearly basis.
5. In order to explore access to banking transactions which includes the bank account details through the GST system, in consultation with RBI and NPCI. Recommendations were also received to make the GST system allied with FIU for the purpose of getting bank account details and transactions and also PAN linked banking transactions.
6. In order to share data of cases that involves evasion and fake refund detected by CBIC with CBDT and vice versa, so that correct profiling of these fraudsters can also be done.
7. It was also recommended to give a single bank account for foreign remittance receipt as well as refund disbursement.
8. A self-assessment declaration has been prescribed by appropriate amendments in GSTR Forms relating to the closure of businesses.
9. To commence verification of unmatched Input Tax Credit availed through taxpayers.
The Central Tax Zonal office of Mumbai and Vadodara had also made presentations relating to the best practices being followed by them in compliance management and revenue increase in their tax administrations. Also, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh presented the best practices implemented by them.
The method of strengthening enforcement through data exchange, sharing knowledge and best practices for a common nation-wide goal that leads towards enhanced compliance management and revenue increase and at the same time confirming that genuine taxpayers are not troubled was welcomed by all.
All Chief Commissioners of Central Tax Zones, State Commissioners of State Taxes, Directors General of CBIC, members of CBIC, Chairman, CBDT as well as his team of Senior officers, Director of FIU-India accompanied by his team of Senior officers, senior officers of the CBIC and Department of Revenue, technical team of GSTN controlled by EVP GSTN and officers from the GST Council Secretariat, etc. to part in the Conference.
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