With one-fourth of taxpayers yet to enroll for the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the government has decided to reopen the IT window from June 1, so as to help firms switch over to the new regime from July.
The finance ministry on Thursday said that 60.5 lakh entities out of 84 lakh have enrolled themselves with the GSTN system and for the remaining tax payers it will reopen for 15 days from June 1.
The process to enrol taxpayers on the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) portal was suspended on April 30.
The government intends to roll out the Goods and Services Tax from July 1.
“As on April 30 2017, when Phase-1 of enrolment was closed, 60.5 lakh taxpayers out of 84 lakh had enrolled. The enrolment window will be re-opened for 15 days from 1st June, 2017 to give another opportunity to taxpayers to enrol,” an official statement said.
Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia, who reviewed the IT preparedness for GST System at GSTN office on Wednesday, expressed satisfaction with the preparation for the roll-out of GST. He reviewed the progress on enrolment of existing taxpayers.
Adhia was also briefed about the software system being developed for GST, training of tax officials and outreach program being undertaken by Tax Departments across the nation.
{{/usCountry}}Adhia was also briefed about the software system being developed for GST, training of tax officials and outreach program being undertaken by Tax Departments across the nation.
{{/usCountry}}Out of 62,937 tax officials, 24,668 tax officials have been given hands-on training on the application software on live system while the remaining officials will be trained by June 15, it said.
The training is being conducted on Registration, Returns and Payment Modules developed by GSTN, it said, adding GSTN is also conducting a pilot on GST System Software from May 2 to May, 16 where 3,200 taxpayers drawn from each State/UT and Centre will be participating.
The pilot covers all the three modules and is being run to give the taxpayers first hand opportunity to work on the live system as the creation of return has become an interactive process, it said.
This will also give an opportunity to test all the modules by a large set of users in real life environment so that all possible scenarios get tested, it said.
All stakeholders involved in the GST System from taxpayer to bank to RBI to accounting authorities are participating in this exercise which is like a rehearsal for the real rollout, it said, adding the feedback from the pilot will be used to further improve the GST Software.
The meeting was attended by Vanaja N Sarna, Chairperson Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), Navin Kumar, Chairman GSTN, B N Sharma, Additional Secretary Revenue and other senior officials.