'New registrations by taxpayers being verified by GST council'

The GST Council is verifying the 66.79 lakh new registrations by taxpayers, which could be fake or pertain to shell companies, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who is also the convenor of Group of Ministers (GoM) on integrated GST, said on Monday.

"The new taxpayers, who are 66.7 lakh in number, hardly pay 15% of tax. So, whatever taxes we are getting from them is only 15% of taxes, which is about Rs 10,000 crore.

Hence, we are strictly monintoring the new taxpayers to ensure they are not fake," he told reporters after the his meeting with the GoM.

Modi said the number of active taxpayers has gone up to 1.21 crore since the launch of the goods and services tax (GST), of which 66.79 lakh are new registrations.

According to him, many states have started physically verifying these companies by visiting the premises, geotagging the location and uploading the photographs on the system from mobile phones.

The GST Council has also introduced 3B, a simple return, which has to be filed every month, said the Bihar deputy chief minister.

"We have decided in one of our GST council meetings that if the firms don't file 3B returns for two consecutive months, their e-way bill will be blocked," said Modi.

He said that till date, about 3.47 lakh dealers' e- way bill has been blocked by the system and as soon as the 3B return is filed, the system would automatically open and the e-bill is generated.

Another decision taken in the meeting was the late fee of Rs 100 per day under the GSTR-1 or the outward supply has been waived, he said.