A problem close to the level of seriousness is approaching and engulfing a massive number of 30 thousand traders, merchants and taxpayers in the nation related to the GST migration. Talking about hundreds of thousands of traders and their problem related to the migration can be hectic and impossible but taking some few example might explain the issue.
A trader from Pune is doing all sorts of exercise to make it happen for migration as he found out that his business registration certificate is null and shows a cancel message every-time he feeds the migration with his Permanent Account Number. Now he has to make it for his business and has been trying all he can do in sales tax office to the consultants. The very same problem is posed in the migration problem of other hundreds of traders application but all in vain.
The officials are not getting the echo of the dwelling traders instead the Niti Aayog along with the prime ministers promise to launch the GST on its scheduled deadline of July 1 is getting heated up even when certain ministers and stakeholders are demanding to shift the GST roll out for September. The trader’s community which is currently tackling with this weird and horrifying situation are blaming the sales tax officers who are not concerned with this issue and has been making excuses.
A trader narrates itself, “I am still waiting for attention from officials to my problem. Both my consultant and I could not succeed in migrating — the software refuses to accept my PAN.” A lot of consultants are lending some help to these traders and made some suggestion being reported by newspaper and media. Their registration will only delay the entire process and as reported by an anonymous consultant that there are “At least 15 traders are visiting me daily about their futile migration attempts.”
A chartered accountant by profession Ruturaj Chingale of the Chingale Firm in Chinchwad finally came out with a probable cause which is making the registration of traders an extra mile away. He said that “It was surprised when many traders came to me for GST migration and I was unable to help them as their RCs were null. When I reworked their documents, I found that many have not filed their Value Added Tax (VAT) returns.”
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An official source confirmed that this issue might be arising from all those pending taxes that traders left in ambiguity and with evasion minded. Also, the software glitch cause is also in the eyes of the tax officials which are probing into the matter and mentioned that the software glitch has automatically deleted the names and tax identification numbers (TIN) of defaulting traders. An official from the department said that “If there is a record of any individual having not paid pending tax at any point, s/he faces this glitch and their names stand deleted.”
GST demands enrollment and for this, all the data of the current valid taxpayer must be validated and assured. This along with other relevant filing information data must be fed on the portal which in turn requires all the existing data of the assessee and registration details in order to verify and Validate him to upload the data and supporting details on the portal. In this manner, the taxpayer and business entity must obtain the provisional identification and password from the state VAT website or ACES website, after being logged into the GST portal, a new user ID and password is formed, and then a provisional GST registration number is released. Thereafter, the assessee is required to upload prescribed information (proof of constitution of business, director details, etc.) to generate an Application Reference Number (ARN) and furnish the migration application.
When approached to the joint commissioner of sales tax for Pune region, R R Patil, the software glitch probably was cancelled by the leading official and said in the statement that, “The registration number may not be accepted by the software because most of these traders may not have paid their pending taxes. If anybody is facing such problems, they should contact our office, so we can sort things out. There are at least 10 lakh traders in the Pune region and our department is trying its best to resolve all their issues.”
