From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru
Bengaluru, Sep 16: The Group of Ministers (GoM) set up to look into the technical issues faced by Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) headed by Bihar’s Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi is hopeful of resolving 80 % of the problems in filing tax returns by October 30.
The GoM held its first meeting in Bengaluru on Saturday and discussed at length technical issues faced by GSTN with top executives of the IT major Infosys that has developed and built the IT system for new tax regime.
The Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister, who chaired a meeting that lasted for nearly two hours, told reporters after the meeting that efforts were being made to solve 80 % of glitches in GSTN by October 30.
It was decided that GoM would hold meeting every 15 days and the next meeting would be held again in Bengaluru in the beginning of October.
The meeting assumed significance since GSTN, the information technology (IT) backbone and portal for real-time taxpayer registration, migration, and tax return filing under GST, had run into a technical snag. GSTN is the biggest network in the world.
Under the one tax system, taxes of 36 departments have to be paid in one system.
"All decisions taken today, time line and implementation of problems will be discussed again in the next meeting. We are moving in unchartered territory. So, there are a few glitches initially," said Modi, who attended almost all tax related meetings during 2007-13.
He was the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar when the Value Added Tax was implemented in 2005.
Nearly 80 officials of commercial tax department of different states held marathon meetings on Friday with all stakeholders such as dealers, tax consultants and software experts to understand numerous challenges faced by them.
Nearly 85 lakh dealers, including migration of 62.25 lakh dealers under VAT, have registered under the GST.
Filing of returns on the last days of the month had caused technical glitches.
A total of 23.18 lakh new dealers have registered under GST.
Modi appealed to dealers to file their tax returns in advance to avoid last minute rush.
"Owing to to huge rush of GSTR-3B return filing on the penultimate date of the month, the GSTN software witnessed glitches," he said.
He pointed out that though there only five days left (including today) for filing returns for August, only 3.05 lakh dealers had filed their 3B returns as against the 46 lakh dealers who filed their returns in July.
Karnataka Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda, Kerala Finance Minister Thomas Isaac, Telangana Finance Minister Etela Rajender, Union Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia, GSTN Chairman Ajay Bhushan Pandey and GSTN CEO Prakash Kumar attended the meeting.