State GST Officers To Reach Out To Businesses To Know Their Grievances

GST (Goods & Services Tax) Officers in states and UTs will soon reach out to businesses, traders and industries in order to understand the prevailing GST issues with which these businesses are struggling. The information collected this way would be placed to the GST Council on August 4 for their consideration.

The GST Council secretariat was contacted earlier this week by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) asking them to contact states and union territories and instruct them to get in touch with taxpayer traders and industry bodies and MSMEs in their respective states/UTs in order to collect their GST related issues and grievances along with suggestions for improvement.

The Council was also instructed to collect all the suggestions and reviews and send it to the CBIC for further process. The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) is the central authority for indirect tax authority. The GST Director-General has been tasked to collect the required information from various GST zones across the country and present it to the GST policy department of the board.

The suggestions and grievances collected from the various state businesses and industries will be placed to the Council before the next GST meeting which is scheduled for August 4. The Council, during its meeting, will then discuss these issues faced by the MSMEs across the country and provide possible solutions.

Finance Minister Piyush Goyal had earlier this week hinted that the 29th GST Council meeting will involve discussions on simplification of GST in order to provide relief to small taxpayers. The recent launch of drafts of new GST return is also a step in that direction. The Council has already increased the threshold for quarterly GST returns to Rs 5 crore from the earlier Rs 1.5 crore mark.