To tackle the cases of tax evasion, the GST officials have come up with the idea to enable a checking feature in the new returns filing system. This will ensure that all the credit requests are first checked for whether the tax has been paid already.
The GST Council had reportedly proposed the alternate monthly return in the recent council meeting to which this new provision is recommended to be included. A senior government official was reported saying, “The tax department is worried about revenue collections, which is reflected in the revised model for GST returns. The question is that if you have not paid tax, then how can you get credit.”
It is also expected that the new return filing system would be integrated with a few checks for the validation of tax payments. However, the council has for now not made any decision about bringing a new return filing system. The filing of GSTR-3B has been extended for three months. “The system is a single monthly return, which is simple but not evasion prone. The view was that it should be further simplified.” However, the committee is not willing to discuss the procedure to simplify it.
The proposed model demanded that the credit should be given to the buyer only after the seller has uploaded the relevant invoice. Showing their unwillingness to implement the new system, officials said it could cause more tax evasion and GST non-compliance. A provision credit may be offered to taxpayers under the proposed revised form for monthly returns.
The data analytics enabled on the platform has helped the CBEC identify several errors and gaps deliberately made between liability details entered in FORM GSTR-1 and FORM GSTR-3B. There were also differences between the IGST and Cess paid by taxpayers and ITC claim request made through GSTR-3B.
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The GST Council has been reportedly working on a simpler, one-page monthly return to ease the high compliance burden currently imposed on taxpayers. The original GST provision requires businesses to file three monthly returns, in addition to the GSTR-3B summarized return.
