Revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia on Thursday expressed satisfaction with the IT preparedness for the July 1 roll-out of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) after he reviewed GST Network (GSTN) on Wednesday.

Revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia on Thursday expressed satisfaction with the IT preparedness for the July 1 roll-out of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) after he reviewed GST Network (GSTN) on Wednesday. As on April 30, over 60 lakh or 72% of the 84 lakh existing taxpayers had enrolled on the GSTN. The enrollment window will be re-opened for 15 days from June 1 to provide another opportunity for taxpayers to enroll on the system, the government said in a statement.

 

GSTN is also conducting a pilot on GST system software where 3,200 taxpayers drawn from each state/UT and centre will participate. “The pilot covers all the three modules and is being run to give the taxpayers first hand opportunity to work on the live system as the creation of return has become an interactive process,” the government said. The pilot started on May 2 and will run till May 16.

 

The three modules will cover the processes involved in filing a return under GST, which includes uploading invoices, creation of supply return, viewing purchase return, editing and accepting purchase return, response of purchaser on added invoice data, payment of taxes, creation of bank scroll and reconciliation of payment by accounting authorities.

 

“All stakeholders involved in the GST System — taxpayers, bank, RBI and accounting authorities— are participating in this exercise which is like a rehearsal for the real roll-out. The feedback from the pilot will be used to further improve the GST software,” the government said.

 

Additionally, out of 62,937 tax officials, 24,668 have had hands-on training on the application software on live system while the remaining officials will be trained by June 15.

 

The preparedness meeting was attended by Vanaja N Sarna, chairperson of Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) and Navin Kumar, chairman GSTN among other officials from finance ministry and representative of the Infosys, the company that is building the IT backbone for GST on behalf of GSTN.