The central excise and customs department has declared a protest will be held stretching across the nation and a mass casual leave will be taken on ‘budget day’ to show off the discontentment regarding the issue of GST and its implementation.
There has been early warning from the All India Association of Central Excise Gazetted Executive Officers who have cleared that all assessees of central excise and service tax with the annual turnover of Rs 20 lakh per annum should only be controlled by the Centre for the purpose of levy and collection of Central GST (CGST) and Integrated GST (IGST).
The statement said that “It has come to notice of the association that the states and their employees have now started demanding control over service tax assessees also falling within the annual turnover limit of Rs 20 lakh per annum to Rs 1.50 crore per annum due to a liberal stand shown by the Centre,”
The memorandum of which was handed to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was quoted that, “The Centre appears to be showing leniency towards states to implement GST at any cost with effect from April 1, 2017.”
The main agenda of the protest has been demanding that none of the assessees of central excise (to be levied CGST on the supply of goods) and service tax (to be levied CGST on the supply of services) should be transferred to states for the purpose of levy and collection of CGST by the officers of states.
The memorandum also said that “All central excise and service tax assessees falling above the annual turnover of Rs 20 lakh should necessarily be controlled by the Centre and its officers only. No need to say that we require a strong and powerful Centre in our federal system,”
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A strict warning has been rolled out by the officials of central excise and customs department that if any sort of loophole occurred in grievances than it “would be compelled to initiate non co-operation movement”. Along with this, there will also be lunch hour gathering in front of the residence of the Finance Minister on October 14 and similar protest on November 9 in all headquarters.
The statement from the also conveyed that, “officers of the association will also wear black badge in all offices on December 7, throughout the country besides a day-long protest programme on January 5, 2017. There will be mass casual leave on budget day by all officers.”
The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has been working with great depth and smooth workflow since 1944 and its employees are equally expertised within it. The body of association said that, “The CBEC and its officers should only be allowed to collect CGST and IGST under the forthcoming concerned statutes of CGST Act and IGST Act. On the other hand, the state government officials should be allowed to collect only SGST on intra-state supply of goods and services. Any cross utilization of powers may lead to serious implications on collection of revenue to the Centre.”
