I-T asks tax practitioners to register entities separately

Barely a fortnight after GST was implemented, some taxpayers have reported that GST portal is mixing up their data with others, a "mishap" for which the I-T department blamed tax practitioners for registering multiple entities simultaneously. The Mumbai division of CBEC in a circular said some cases have been brought to its notice wherein "taxpayers are complaining that when they are logging into their account using their login credentials, they are diverted to some other's account on GST portal and the data of another taxpayer is displayed in that account". These, the tax department said, are the cases where the registration or enrolment of the business entity has been done by the same tax practitioner. "This happens when a tax practitioner opens multiple windows on his/her computer in the same browser for different taxpayers. The data while filing up the application form resides in the cache memory of the computer and such mishap happens," it said.

The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) asked all tax practitioners not to open more than one enrolment or registration case at one time. "After completing one case, clear the cache memory of the computer system before initiating second registration/ enrolment process," it added.

The finance ministry has already asked businesses to register themselves by July 30. If a business has a valid PAN, email ID and a mobile number, then it can file an online application on the common portal https://www.gst.gov.in/ and get registered for GST.