Center to Review GSTN Portal Functionality & Tax Systems on 4th Apr

To evaluate the GSTN portals operation and the GST systems and procedures, the finance ministry on April 4 would have called for a meeting as the GST collection in March stands out to be the second highest.

The officials stated that “The April 4 meeting will be chaired by Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra. Members of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, and the GSTN CEO will be attending the meeting. The meeting will focus on the GSTN portal’s functioning, GST processes, ease of filing returns, and technical glitches, if any,”

GST network furnishes with the technology backend.

The March GST collection surged by 13% to Rs 1.60 lakh crore, the 2nd highest monthly mop-up since the indirect taxation regime in July 2017 started, just after that Rs 1.68 lakh crore was collected last April. The returns filed in March have been the highest ever, with 93.2 per cent of GSTR-1 invoices and 91.4 per cent of GSTR-3B returns.

“The GST collection in April is likely to be a record high,” as per officials.

The meeting for April 4 would be to assure that the functioning and the GSTN portal are all in place before the start of the GST collection in the new fiscal year.

GST collections for the finish of the year would be always more elevated since the businesses would supervise to clear their late payments.

For FY23-24, the share of centres for the collection of the GST revenue would be anticipated to rise by 12% to Rs 9.56 lakh crore from the modified estimate of Rs 8.54 lakh crore in FY22-23.

Along with that the State GST (SGST), “The average monthly GST collection in FY23-24 is likely to be Rs 1.6 lakh crore (CGST + IGST + SGST) owing to the plugging of a lot of leakages, streamlining of e-way bills, and enforcement measures,” as per officials. The inflation would indeed be the portion in raising the GST collection.

GST system in the former year would have seen a lot of flak from assessee because of problems of the back end which results in the sluggish operation of the portal that directed the Finance Ministry to extend the due date for furnishing the taxes. The government would have shown the problems with Infosys handling the GSTN back-end on exceeding than one occasion and told its dissatisfaction. The technical problems resolved would have been expected by the industry.

Through the tax base expansion and enforcement efforts, the collection of GST revenue would have arrived a long way.

On 1st July 2017, the Goods and Services Tax(GST) would have started. Rs 95,633 was collected in that month. At the time of the pandemic from a low of Rs 32,172 in May 2020 to Rs 1.6 lakh cr this March, the GST would have arrived a long way. Increasing the revenue of GST is a tough task with the average monthly collection that lefts out less than Rs 1 lakh cr.

“Higher tax collections indicate that efforts to crack down on tax evasion and increase compliance are paying off. It would be interesting to see if the growth story continues in FY 23-24. In the coming year, big data analytics and AI will be the most prominent tools that will help the tax department identify and arrest tax evasion“.