Govt plans mass outreach to iron out GST concerns
FM meets stakeholders; pan-indian initiative for new forms on Dec 7
With the government facing severe revenue stress, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday met representatives of small and medium enterprises, chartered accountants, retailers, and independent professionals to iron out concerns related to goods and services tax (GST) compliance. In a live demonstration of sorts, the representatives attempted to file actual returns during the meeting to highlight their concerns.
The one-to-one meetings were attended by representatives of the Indian Chartered Accountants Association (ICAI), Laghu Udyog Bharti, Rajasthan Tax Consultant Association, Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), and a Kolkatabased independent tax professional.
The aim of the exercise was to further simplify GST forms and make the filing process more user-friendly, the finance ministry said in a tweet.
Sitharaman asked the revenue
department to carry out a similar exercise across the country on December 7 for the new return forms to come into effect from April 2020. That would mean commissioners across circles would meet select individual GST return filers to respond to their queries and resolve issues. Saturday’s meeting was attended by officers from the Department of Revenue and GST Network (GSTN)
— the information technology backbone for GST.
“The FM decided that every commissioner of every circle should invite assessees with accountants who will actually file returns on a real time basis in front of the officer to understand the problems,” Revenue Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey told reporters after the meeting.