NEW DELHI: Goods and Services Tax (GST) compliance requirements are set to tight as central and state authorities attempt to boost revenue collection.
Federal tax body, the GST Council, cleared several measures at its 45th meeting held in Lucknow on Friday to scale up compliance. Accordingly, businesses would need Aadhaar authentication of their GST registration to be eligible for filing tax refund claims. Aadhaar authentication will also be required for revocation of cancellation of GST registration by authorities.
Also, tax refunds will be disbursed into the bank account, which is linked with the same permanent account number (PAN) on which GST registration has been obtained. Businesses will not be allowed to report their sales in form GSTR-1 if they have not filed tax return about the summary of transactions in GSTR-3B for the preceding month.
Central and state authorities are keen to improve tax compliance and reduce instances of evasion as the tax base has shrunk following various tax relief measures offered since the start of the GST regime five years ago. The government will likely continue to focus on tax compliance given that raising tax rate is a political hot potato.
GST Council has decided to ease some norms to help businesses and offered clarification on certain contentious issues. One of the relaxations relate to filing of returns for outsourced work. As per the changes, businesses with sales more than Rs5 crore are required to report outsourced work only once in six months while smaller businesses could do it once in a year. Hereon, quarterly requirement will be the norm.
Authorities will also soon clarify that external batteries sold along with Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) will be taxed at 28% other than lithium-ion battery, while the UPS or inverter would attract 18% tax.
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