The Union finance secretary Hasmukh Adhia has confirmed that the Government will introduce the newly proposed single GST Return by the Group of Ministers (GoM) recently will be implemented within three to six months.
Adhia was addressing the convocation of the 70th batch of the Indian Revenue Services at the National Academy of Direct Taxes.
On 17th April, a panel of ministers led by Bihar Minister Sushil Kumar Modi finalized a simplified, single page return, as per which the taxpayers will get credit on a provisional basis once the concerned supplier uploads the sales invoice.
Replying to a query on the leakages being reported in GST-1 and GST-3(b), the top finance ministry official said, “we are checking GST-1 and GST-3b. It is coming to the fore that there is leakage and we will plug it.
“There are leakages but there is no perfect matching until the new system gets in place. Within three to six months a new system will be in place, making the whole process smoother,” he said.
The GST Council, headed by finance minister Arun Jaitley and comprising state counterparts, last month discussed on two models of GST returns and asked the GoM to discuss on further simplification of returns.
One of the models presented before the council was provisional credit should not be granted unless the taxpayers file returns and pay taxes. The second model stated that provisional credit could be granted to a taxpayer, but returns have to be filed within 3-4 months and taxes have to be paid or else the credit amount would be reversed.
The meeting decided that businesses would have to file only one return every month, instead of GSTR-1, 2 and 3 as was conceived earlier. Also, there was unanimity that there would be no system based matching and purchaser would have to verify the invoice uploaded by the seller.
The number of returns filed by both small and large taxpayers would be 12 in a year, instead of current 36.
