TTD CHAIRMAN SEEKS WAIVER ON GST ARREARS
TTD Trust Board chairman Y.V. Subba Reddy met Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman at New Delhi on Tuesday and sought her support to resolve certain issues related to the disposal of demonetised currency and waving of GST arrears to be paid by the temple body to the AP Special Protection Force (SPF).
According to a statement released by the TTD, the chairman sought the Union minister to address the issue of
`49.70 crore worth demonetised currency notes, which has been piled up in the TTD’s locker since 2016, and also requested her to waive the outstanding arrears of GST to the tune of `23.78 crores, payable by the TTD to the SPF.
In the representation handed over to the finance minister, Subba Reddy stated that the TTD has been utilising the services of the AP SPF since
1998, which has been providing security cover to temples under the the TTD. In 2019, the TTD has received a communication from the DG of SPF that the temple body has to pay
`22.27 crore arrears towards service tax.
He pointed out that the TTD has availed a relief under the Union government’s Sabka Vishwas Scheme, 2019, and recently made a payment of `4.31 crore to the SPF. The SPF DG, however, again sent a communique to the TTD, requesting the temple body to pay `23.78 crore including `13.63 crore towards outstanding GST dues for the period between April 1,
2014 and June 30, 2017 along with the interest amount of
`10.14 crore up to June 30,
2020. Placing all the facts, the chairman appealed to the Union finance minister to waive the pending dues of GST.
In another representation to the Union finance minister, the chairman underlined that the temple management had stopped accepting the demonetised `500 and `1000 currency notes at its counters, duly following the guidelines of the RBI and the Central government, post demonetisation announcement on November
8, 2016. Many devotees, however, continued to offer in the hundi in the form of demonetised currency, even after the deadline ended.
On the other hand, several banks in which the TTD has been maintaining its accounts and parked thousands of crores of corpus funds, have also stopped accepting the demonetised currency from the TTD.