GST: Sluggish government of Jaffa traders

-Antena: Vivek Mehta

- Government seeks early introduction of bill matching system to curb corruption of officials and theft of traders

Since the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax system on July 1, 2016, there has been a widespread complaint that the government counts every trader as a criminal. After taking the order of the goods and failing to supply, the officials chase both the traders who come to the deal with the same stick. Central-state GST officials have now started sending notices to a number of traders after assessing them.

Yes, even bogus billing is not a boon. They simply bill the GST and provide input tax credit to different traders based on it. It involves both the buyer of the goods and the seller of the goods. The buyer then shouts falsely that the goods have been misplaced. He has bought goods and paid his bills as well as taxes. But now the department is refusing to give him an input tax credit and putting him in the category of tax evader or bogus billing. Thus, the system has not yet succeeded in cracking down on those who take false input tax credit. Chargesheet is filed for issuing bogus bills of thousands of crores and taking wrong input tax credit. Details of how much money the government has actually managed to recover are often not made public. It is therefore not clear whether the goods and services tax is being evaded by the traders after the traders are wrongly harassed by the authorities.

The government should not try to stop the flow of input tax credit if it is to maintain the momentum of the economy. If the merchant gets his input tax credit on time, he may have less time to add new capital to grow the business. If their business breaks down, there will be a break in the progress of the economy. However, the government has made provision for giving input tax credit to the buyer only after the seller submits the GST so that the wrong ITC does not go.

The trader deals with the seller, assuming that the seller has a GST number and is running, so the seller will be genuine. If the investigating officer suspects that five of the 100 traders in the deal have erroneous bills, the government official does not recognize the trade even if it provides every piece of evidence that it has delivered the goods. Though the investigating officer does not have a single piece of evidence that the trader did not take delivery, the mentality of considering him a thief is seen in the officers. The total turnover of the trader is 100. In it his Rs. The turnover of 20 is genuine. Turnover of only Rs 10 does not seem to be genuine. So the officer considers the full turnover of the trader to be wrong. Lets call him a bogus trader. That trader paid Rs. If the turnover tax of Rs 10 is not paid, action is taken against all the traders involved. Threatens to create greater tax liability. So the trader has to surrender against the grandfathering of the officers for fear of being thrown out of the business. The trader who has to prove the observations of the officer wrong has to be forever harassed. SGST and CGST officials are similarly harassing traders. The basic intention behind it is to take corruption money.

The direct way to control bogus billing of traders and corruption of government officials is to match the bills. If the seller and the buyer of the goods are uploaded online with the bill number, it should be matched automatically. Now the government has been announcing for the last four years to introduce this bill matching system. But to this day this system has never been turned on. Thus sluggishness is to the government machinery. As a result, the number of traders is increasing.