WB AAR: Unique GSTIN Can’t Opt If Person Running Many Types of Businesses from One Place

For the cases in which the registered individual performs the separate kind of business from the identical place of business within the state then he does not choose to get the separate registration within the same state, The West Bengal Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR) witnessed.

Under the West Bengal Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 the petitioner is a registered person and has the business of manufacturing and reselling goods, and beyond that, it furnishes the services. The petitioner would wish to do business activities from the other states also.

The petitioner, Aesthetik Engineers Private Limited, has concerns regarding the necessity of registration. The remaining questions, however, relate to the need for registration in other States, while the first two questions concern registration in the State of West Bengal. We start by addressing the question of whether this authority has the authority to decide whether the applicant must be registered in a state other than the State of West Bengal.

Sub-section (2) of section 25 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 (CGST) furnishes for the single registration in a State or Union territory, the petitioner stated. But according to the proviso towards the stated subsection, an individual securing multiple places of business in the state or Union territory might be allotted a separate registration for each such place of business, as per these pre-requisites.

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The petitioner, a conjoint reading of the mentioned provisions of the CGST act and the rules that when the assessee would doing the business of manufacturing/reselling/providing the services from the identical place of business i.e the identical address like a taxable individual would not be needed to opt the separate registration for every sort of business i.e manufacturing/reselling/providing services, however, there would be no limitation under the West Bengal Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 to obtain the separate registration for every sort of business from the identical business place.

Rule 11 of the CGST / WBGST Rules, 2017 has also experienced a revision with effect from the date 01.02.2019 in which the way to ‘Separate registration for multiple business verticals within a State or a Union territory’ has been replaced via ‘Separate registration for multiple places of business within a State or a Union territory’. Moreover, a new rule 41A would have inserted w.e.f. 01.02.2019 specifying the way to transfer credit on getting separate registration for multiple places of business within a State or Union territory.

A Two-Member Bench of the Authority comprising Sarthak Saxena, Joint Commissioner, CGST & CX and Joyjit Banik, Senior Joint Commissioner, SGST witnessed that “In other words, option for separate registration may be availed by a registered person provided such registered person has multiple places of business. Therefore, in cases where a registered person carries on separate types of businesses from the same place of business within a State, he cannot opt to obtain separate registration within the said State as per proviso to sub-section (2) of section 25 of the GST Act read with rules made there under.”

The authority ended that “As per proviso to sub-section (2) of section 25 of the GST Act, separate registration in a State may be granted to a person who has multiple places of business in that State”