About 1,800 businesses that were registered under the earlier VAT and service tax regime have applied for migrating to the GST regime. 

The GST Council, in its meeting in July, had allowed businesses with provisional GST ID to migrate to the new GST regime. 

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) had then asked these taxpayers to approach the jurisdictional nodal officer of the Central or state government on or before the August 31, 2018, along with provisional ID, registration number under the earlier law, reason for not migrating in the system, along with the contact details. 

“About 1,800 businesses have migrated to GST regime availing the latest migration window. The number could go up as the state tax officers are still compiling data,” an official told. 

Currently, over 1.15 crore businesses are registered under the GST regime, of which 63.76 lakh have migrated from the erstwhile service tax and VAT regime, and over 51 lakh are new registrants. 

“The migration window since November 2016 and closed after roll out of GST on July, 2017. Many taxpayers would have migrated when the window was open initially before GST roll-out. Hence the turnout for migration would have been less this time,” the official added. 

The process of migration of existing assessees to the GSTN had started in a phased manner from November 2016. 

Once a business migrates to GST regime, it is given a provisional ID. After that, in the second stage, the business has to log in to the GSTN portal and give details of its business, such as the main place of business, additional place of business, directors and bank account details. 

Thereafter, the business has to verify its registration through digital signature, or by generating an electronic verification code (EVC). 

Many businesses, who were earlier registered with excise, service tax, VAT regime, had not completed the second stage of migration process. 

In the VAT regime, businesses with turnover upto Rs 5 lakh were exempt. However, in Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, the exemption threshold has gone up to Rs 20 lakh. Hence, all businesses who were registered under erstwhile Indirect tax regime, need not migrate to GST regime.