A charge of nearly INR 500 crores as a service tax will be paid annually in the consideration of Goods and Service Network by the central government. The previous thought was to obtain this amount from the taxpayers only, but as a good faith, the government decided to pay the service tax itself.
GST Network is a not-for-profit organization and Centre and States have 24.5 per cent stake respectively while financial institutions have 51 per cent in GSTN. Navin Kumar, Chairman, GST Network confirmed that “The Centre will annually pay nearly Rs 500 crore to Goods and Services Tax (GST) Network as a service charge on behalf of taxpayers. There was a plan to charge the assessees but Government said since they will be paying tax to the government, it will not be correct to charge them. The Centre will instead compensate GSTN for the service.”
On SICCI Interactive Session on ‘ Taxpayers Facing Processes on GST Portal” he mentioned that “Every month, nearly 320 crore invoices are to be uploaded into the GST network. For that, the network needs about 20 petabytes of storage every month. For two years, the storage required will be around 500 petabytes. The private data center dedicated for GSTN will be in Delhi and a disaster recovery center in Bengaluru.”
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