GST Return: There is good news for businessmen. Modi government is engaged in making the process of GST return easier. For this, pre-filled GST return forms will come before the start of the new financial year.
The government is making the process of filing Goods and Services Tax (GST) returns easier. Pre-filled GST return forms will arrive before the start of the new financial year. According to a senior official, this initiative of the Finance Ministry will deal with the problems of unnecessary tax notices.
Currently, the department is analyzing the additional cost of enhancing the digital infrastructure to avoid system slowdown or crashes due to extraction of data from disparate databases. The official says that we have a big problem of mismatch in data, due to which their number is increasing due to issuance of unnecessary notices. Pre-filled GST returns will improve ease of doing business as well as prevent errors in data matching.
Presently the automated checking module for GST returns sends notices to assessees with data matching gap of more than 20 per cent using data analytics and risks identified by the system. The Central Board of Direct Taxes has been using similar pre-filled forms for income tax return forms for some years. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has made the technical requirement and necessary reforms in it.
GST Council approval not necessary: The department has to tell the Finance Ministry what technical information will be collected for digital infrastructure and processes. The official said that as we become more automated, this system and its response time will reduce.
We are taking data from multiple databases, which will take time. According to the official, it will initially conduct a pilot test to see how the pre-filled GST return form will work and how much time it will take. He said that the new system is for the convenience of taxpayers, for which the approval of GST Council is not necessary.
