The tax officers will go and search for the businesses or companies who have been registered under the GST (Goods and Services Tax) but later disappeared and did not file the returns or paid any taxes.
The tax authorities are planning to plot a plan to find these missing GST (Goods and Services Tax) taxpayers which will also include the visit to their offices.
A government official said that the officers are worried about the missing registered taxpayers and even there are cases in which the claim of ITC is used to be done via fake invoices.
At first, the tax authorities will validate the GST registered companies and their premises and would further strictly take action if the taxes also not been paid along with non-filing.
Karnataka is the first state to implement the scheme which will be followed by other states because the collection of GST has reduced to less than Rs 1 lakh crore a month. GST collection in November 2018 was Rs 97,637 crore which fell down after the crossing of Rs 1 lakh crore in October.
There is a fall in the filing of GSTR-3B which must be submitted every month by all those registered for GST due to which the tax administrators are worried. To reduce the compliance burden, this form was introduced.
As per the government, there are more than 10 million businesses which are registered for GST but for the month of October, only 6.96 million GSTR-3B forms were filed in November.
Karnataka government circular further mentioned that the enforcement wing found out that most of the business units were not even paying taxes along with non-filing of GST returns.
It said, “For effective tackling of the situation with regard to persistent non-filers, more cases are required to be visited to ensure timely payment of tax and filing of returns”.
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Officials are authorized under the GST law due to which they have to take some strict actions to protect the revenue interests.
The experts have indicated that such measures are been taken due to the negligent behavior of the taxpayers.
Pratik Jain, national leader, indirect taxes, at PwC said “Percentage of compliance in terms of filing of returns has been a major concern for the government, particularly in light of recent cases of tax evasion and fake invoices that have surfaced. Over the last several months, compliance has not improved significantly”.
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Jain said that from the business point of view, it only means that the strictness must be there to confirm that their traders are GST-compliant.
