Cover Story
Ajay Bhushan Pandey
‘ GSTN Is A Great Example Of Cooperative Federalism ’
The main challenge was to bring all the states into one single tax platform
The Goods and Services Tax Network ( GSTN ) is a dynamic and evolving system , says its chairperson Ajay Bhushan Pandey . In a discussion with M Rajendran , he speaks about the past and future challenges of the organisation .
The GSTN will be completing one year of operation this month . How has the last 12 months been for your organisation ? The last 12 months have been very eventful and transformative for the entire country . Before GST was introduced , 35 state and union territories had their own value added tax systems . They had their own ways of filing tax returns , laws and formats . Then there were central excise and service taxes . There were 37 disparate systems that hardly spoke to each other . Imagine a country of 120 crore people with more than a crore of dealers . Now they are all being brought under one digital platform .
In the earlier system , the level of digitisation varied from state to state . Within a short span of time , all the 37 different items have been integrated into one . The entire return filing system has been made transparent and digital . It is a faceless system , where you can file digitally .
But that was not the case in the beginning … When you are bringing about a change in any large system , there are bound to be issues . The software did require a bit of tweaking and creating awareness among people . For example , if you switch from an android phone to iPhone or from Windows to Macintosh , you will find it difficult to adjust for a while . People were used to the 37 different tax systems but we are now moving to a single system , so doubts and questions are natural . In the
How did you prepare for this challenging task ? One was technology and the other was legal . Thirtyseven laws had to be brought under one single structure – the Central GST , Integrated GST and the State GST . Challenge was to take care of the different legal requirements . In a federal structure , the challenge was to maintain autonomy and bring all the states into one single platform . Look at the sheer technological scale of this operation . It has processed 357 crore invoices and 14 crore returns . Every month , 70-80 lakh returns are being filed . The number of people who can simultaneously log into our system is more than 1.3 lakh . This is a huge number in a country with different educational backgrounds . For example , the traders - not all of them are experts in information technology , but they are now able to file their tax returns smoothly and complying with all the GSTN requirements .
Photo : gireesh . gv
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Outlook Money July 2018 www . outlookmoney . com