Cover Story
Prakash Kumar
CEO GSTN
W
e started this journey in 2014,
but there was no law or
business process. The draft law came
in the middle of 2016. We developed
registration, return and payment.
The GSTN trained 3,000
master trainers in March
2017. When the final law
came it had many changes
from the draft law, so we had
to quickly make changes. That is why the return deployment was
staggered.
When we started, we were told there will be about 65 lakh
taxpayers, but we had designed our system for bigger transaction.
GSTN is the largest indirect system in the world.
So we have more than one crore tax payers, as on date, out
of which about 63.5 lakh are those who migrated from old tax
system and rest are new tax payers. Now the payments are coming
regularly now.
We were working on a new law and were prepared for the
challenges. But GST Council has been very responsive. Our
software for tax rates was not affected, but when processes
changed it did impact us in areas like refund. We had to just
do it. It was a prestigious assignment and all of us were under
tremendous pressure. It was like we were in the process of building
a ship while we were sailing.
Our team, along with partners Infosys and Tech Mahindra who
were providing call centre support, was ready. Yes, despite that
there were problems. In a large IT system like this one, no one can
say that we have tested each and every possible scenario. If that
were the case, most IT firms in the world would not come with
patches in the software. We are continuously working to improve
the user experience. We plan to soon offer GST return filing on the
mobile. It will be useful for those who have nil returns.
One year’s Booty
The month-wise figures of Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST), State
Goods and Services Tax (SGST), Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST)
and Cess collected by the Government since July 1, 2017 is as under:
1,10,000
1,00,000 93,590
93,029
90,000
80,000
Aug ’17
Sept ’17
1,03,458
95,132
Oct ’17
85,931 83,716
Nov ’17 Dec ’17
88,929 88,047
Jan ’18 Feb ’18
89,264
Mar ’18
Apr ’18
94,016
May ’18
Source: Press Information Bureau
22
Outlook Money July 2018 www.outlookmoney.com
Since GST came into force, they’ve
been unable to put a fixed cost of a
property they sell owing to a complex
math on how to value land and
material.
In the last 12 months, the
government, including the GST
Council, has been trying to bring more
clarity on how GST applies on products
and services. Its latest effort has been to
clarify the tax implications for banking,
mutual fund, credit card and insurance
firms, details which has remained
fuzzy for a year. The clarifications,
which came on June 2018, also revealed
a hike in service fees (now GST) on the
financial and insurance services.
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