Economic Times–मध्ये आलेल्या बातमीचा माझ्या दृष्टीने महत्वाचा भाग खालीलप्रमाणे
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Under the GST Act, an enterprise can reduce the tax already paid on inputs at the time of paying tax on output; this is commonly referred to as ‘input credit.’
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It entails monthly computation of every B2B transaction with every party that a single company does business with. For enterprises, this means capturing every invoice for it to be corroborated against how the corresponding party (supplier or buyer) recorded that same transaction. This enables tax authorities to check if any business is understating number of business transactions and value.
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Such computations have to be done across more than 6.5 million businesses. This mindboggling activity involves anywhere between 1.2 billion and 2 billion invoices getting uploaded every month. It makes the underlying technology (or platform) absolutely vital.
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Simply put, GST accepts an indirect tax settlement only after the two parties (buyer and seller) agree on every single transaction.
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Incorporated in 2013, the GSTN is a private body that manages the software platform. By releasing secure APIs, it has already delegated the GST computation and processing tasks to 34 ‘GSTN Suvidha Providers’ (GSPs) such as Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and Alankit Ltd.
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The latter is opening 4,000 facilitation centres at its locations across the country, where GSTN-certified accountants (CA) and lawyers can bring tax filings in a raw format. Each facilitation centre will process the application and upload these filings to the network.
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Small enterprises like kirana shops often depend on CAs and tax-return preparers. GSTN is looking to authorise such experts as GST practitioners (GSTPs) under the GST law, says Prakash Kumar, chief executive of GSTN. These include three kinds of experts. For chartered accountants, cost accountants and company secretaries, the GSTN has “already signed up with institutes of chartered accountants, cost accountants and company secretaries to validate the registration details of members of these institutes who apply for enrolment as GSTP,” Kumar said.
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The second category is retired tax officials who are currently known as sales tax practitioners (STP) in states, and the third is of graduates or postgraduates in commerce, law, banking, or business management (which covers lawyers as well). For these two categories of GSTPs, respective tax departments will validate the application for enrolment after going through the documents provided by the applicants.
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Tally is a GSP, whose clientele comprises SMEs that use its software. It has around 1 million legal users, of which more than 90% are SMEs. The GST Council’s push to comply will force pirated users of Tally to migrate to legal software. This new market is estimated to be around four times the current size of Tally’s user base. But Goenka fears it is bound to contract because of input-credit. SMEs have problems peculiar to their size, and worries large companies don’t have.
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With cash-flow uncertainties, delays are common. Such delays can lead to the SME in question getting poor compliance-ratings from GSTN, which in turn upsets their ability to borrow. That’s why Goenka wrote: “A few proposals will slowly, but with certainty, drive almost every small business to eventual closure. This is not the INTENT of the government — it is simply an unexpected consequence of other good intent.”
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An accountant explains with a hypothetical example. If there are two entities, and one has a number of Rs 75,000 on his invoice and the other entity has Rs 90,000, unless the two numbers match, they are not going to get the full credit. “You get a part credit for Rs 75,000 which becomes provisional. There are 60 days to take it up or the other entity brings it down. Otherwise, an interest gets charged. Your compliance rating gets hit.”
aniltikotekar4sme.com 