ERODE: The Union government may ease the bottleneck in the reimbursement of input tax credit to manufacturers/traders through a single-window disbursement mechanism, which is likely to be handled by the State GST office and overseen by Central revenue officials. While the entire framework would continue to be governed by the Central laws, these Central officials would report to the State finance minister.
According to an assistant commissioner of the Central GST and Excise department, this would save the taxpayers from the trouble of having to shuttle between the Central (excise and customs) and State (State commercial tax) departments.
This might address the long-pending demand of taxpayers to expedite the processing and dispensing of ITC for accounts under the ambit of State GST office, the official explained. While the Central GST office clears the reimbursement within 15 days (as per norm), the State office takes as much as three-four months to complete the process. Taxpayers are having to visit both offices to get their reimbursement and fill separate forms for the same process. What more, filing monthly returns properly does not lessen the number of problems. Hence, the Centre plans to entrust the operations with the State government but equip them with officials from the Centre to run it.
How it works
Earlier, manufacturers had been under the purview of the Centre and traders (sales) under the State. However, once GST was introduced in July 2017, both manufacturers and traders were brought under the administration of Central and State departments.
For example, if there were 1,000 manufacturers and 5,000 traders in a district, the total strength of 6,000 were segregated into two sets of 3,000 and Central and State officials were entrusted with administration of one set each. This created room for confusion. Now, the departments have also been renamed as State GST Office and Central GST and Excise Office. Then, Customs was made into a separate department.
Now, the entire system is managed by GST Network, a software provider and online managing system of a private firm. This is the system used by officials for viewing returns filed by registered taxpayers.