Center to soon notify rules for setting up GST Appellate Tribunals

New Delhi: The Center will soon notify rules for setting up the GST Appellate Tribunal and appoint members after approval from the Goods and Services Tax Council. Shashank Priya, Member, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) said that the department is working to widen the taxpayer base and is using data from various sources in the case of corporate taxpayers in the income tax regime to arrive at an accurate assessment. .
As per the data, at present only 40 per cent of the corporate income tax payer base is registered under GST.

There are 1.39 crore companies registered under GST. This is almost double the number of goods and services applicable from July 1, 2017. The average monthly GST collection has also increased during this period. Where it was Rs 89,885 crore in 2017-18, it has increased to Rs 1.50 lakh crore in 2022-23. The average income so far in the current financial year stood at Rs 1.69 lakh crore per month. He said, “…we are taking steps after thinking. We are in the process of taking business-friendly steps.” Shashank Priya said at the GST conference of industry body FICCI, “We are in the process of notifying the rules after getting approval from the council. We have to set up institutions with a workforce. We hope that it will happen soon.

The council will also approve the work experience and eligibility of the members of the tribunal. Parliament in March approved changes to the Finance Bill to pave the way for setting up an appellate tribunal to resolve disputes under GST. As per the plan, benches of the tribunal will be set up in each state, while Delhi will have a principal bench. At present, taxpayers have to approach the respective high courts with complaints from the tax authorities. Since there are already a large number of cases pending in the courts, the resolution process gets delayed. Also, they do not have any special bench to deal with GST cases.

In such a situation setting up benches at the state and national level would help in speedy disposal of cases. Priya said that there are some companies who have misused the registration process. CBIC is now using information technology to tighten the registration process and nab wrongdoers. He said the two-month-long campaign by the central and state tax officials to weed out bogus registrations has yielded Rs 13,900 crore. 45,000 bogus GST registrations linked to evasion are under probe. Besides, the authorities have also stopped wrongful availing of input tax credit worth Rs 1,430 crore.