According to three GST providers who spoke with an imminent media house on the basis of anonymous identity mentioned that the new rules, regulations, and revisions made by the Goods and Service Tax (GST) are influencing the new Information technology and cutting down the time available for software testing and security compliance.
In a meeting which was held on Friday last week in Gurugram, it was revealed that GSTN (Goods and Services Tax Network) has been developed to render IT infrastructure facility and services to all stakeholders including, state government, central government, businesses, taxpayers for rolling out new GST Regime.
The motto of meeting to discuss for postponing GST dates by which taxpayers or business units have to provide the details of accounts or bills of the month of from August to September so that GSPs are capable of testing the load of the system and security compliance on the basis of revised rules. One service provider spoke to the media and also alarmed with the sentence that, “The time is dangerously short.”
The GSTN has selected 34 companies as GST Suvidha Providers (GSPs) which are privately owned companies helping and providing several services such as registration, the filing of taxes to the different stakeholders.
GSP companies are worrying about the revised dates of releasing APIs (application programming interface) or the code which enables the software program of the service provider. Through APIs or code, companies (GSPs) are able to communicate with GSTN. Chief executive of GTSN said that “will be released in a staggered manner based on the priority of requirements.”
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Chief Executive of GSTN Prakash Kumar said that “For instance, specifications of 15 APIs for invoice upload and GSTR-1 have been released in the first lot on 8 June as they are required from July 1. Based on these, GSPs will update their codes and when we release live APIs later, they can test the integration. Similarly, next lot will be on GSTR-2, as these will be required in August after 10. With this mechanism, we hope the majority of them will be ready in time.”
A senior official of GSTN said that for uploading invoices, there is a requirement of strong IT Infrastructure which will be started from 1st July. Taxpayers would be able to file their returns or pay taxes for the month of July till by 10th August. He further added that the GSTN platform would be ready for this and added that, “Systems would be up and running,”.
Kumar said that, “In case few GSPs are not ready, their customers can use the (GSTN’s) offline tool to upload invoices,” He further added that “Taxpayers having small number of business to business invoices, like retailers and small traders, can do the data entry on (GSTN) portal itself and they will also not require the services of GSPs.”
The meeting which was conducted in last week, the GSTN was guiding the service providers to carry out ISO audit compliance for ‘infrastructure’ and cloud or captive or owned and ‘application’. GSTN said while giving out a presentation to GSPs, “Security Audit can be done by internal team initially but it is recommended that it should be audited by audit agencies specified in the contract in the due course of time.”
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A service provider told media that, “concern is with application security”. The infrastructure certification is possible and in GSPs under the control, “but when I talk about the application, it can’t be certified until it is ready and unless all APIs are made available to us.”