REACH OUT TO NON-FILERS OF GSTR: CBEC

New Delhi, Nov. 13: The tax department has directed its field offices to reach out to businesses that have not filed returns under the GST but were paying taxes in the erstwhile service tax/VAT regime.

The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has shared the zone-wise data of businesses under the GST with regional commissioners to handhold them in case they are facing difficulty while filing returns under the new indirect tax regime.

The CBEC is the apex decision making body for policies relating to indirect taxes.

About one crore businesses have registered themselves on the GST Network portal. Of this, about 72 lakh have migrated from the erstwhile excise, service tax and VAT regime.

“Field offices know which businesses used to file tax in the earlier regime. Now we have shared with them the initial GSTR-3B return data to match if anyone who is eligible for paying taxes in the new regime is left out,” an official said.

BUSINESSES might be thinking that they do not need to file tax returns because they do not have to pay tax, according to an official