GST HEADLINES
September 29, 2016
Cabinet Clears Rs 2,256 Cr Project Saksham for GST Integration
[Source : Business Standard]
A Part of GST Software to be Operational by October
[Source : Business Today]
Cabinet Clears Rs 2,256 Cr Project Saksham for GST Integration
Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs cleared project Saksham of Central Board of Excise and Customs which will help integrate CBEC's system with the GST network
Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs(CCEA) on Wednesday cleared a Rs 2,256 crore IT project Saksham of the Central Board of Excise and Customs, which will help integrate CBEC's system with theGSTnetwork before the rollout in April next year.
The implementation strategy for the project will be to ensure readiness of CBEC's IT framework by April, 1, 2017, whenGSTis to be introduced, an official statement read.
The CCEA, chaired by Prime MinisterNarendra Modihas approved Project Saksham, a New Indirect Tax Network (Systems Integration) of CBEC.
"The total project cost involved is Rs 2,256 crore, which will be incurred over seven years," the statement said, adding that the upgrade of the IT systems will be carried out while keeping the existing taxpayer services running.
Project Saksham will help in implementation of goods and services tax (GST), extension of theIndian Customs Single Window Interface for Facilitating Trade(SWIFT) and other taxpayer-friendly initiatives under Digital India and Ease of Doing Business of CBEC.
"All taxpayers/importers/exporters/dealers under various indirect tax laws administered by CBEC — presently about 36 lakh — are likely to go up to over 65 lakh after introduction of GST," the statement added.
CBEC's IT structure needs to integrate with the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) for processing of registration, payment and returns data sent to CBEC as well as act as a front-end for other modules like audit, appeal and investigation.
There is no overlap in the GST-related systems of CBEC and GSTN, the statement said.
"This IT infrastructure is also urgently required for continuation of CBEC's e-services in Customs, central excise and service tax, implementation of taxpayer services such as scanned document upload facility, extension of Indian Customs SWIFT initiative and integration with government initiatives such as e-nivesh, e-taal and e-sign," the statement added.
The government plans to roll out the new indirect tax regimeGSTfrom April 1, 2017, which will subsume excise, service tax and a clutch of other local levies.
A Part of GST Software to be Operational by October
The software application for migration of existing VAT, service tax and central sales tax assessees to the new GST network the would be ready by October-end, according to a source at GST Network (GSTN), the agency entrusted with the responsibility of building the (front-end) IT infrastructure for GST.
"This is the first instalment of the first phase of the application development and is being called R0. The first instalment of the application, which would be ready by October-end, would be used for migration of exiting VAT, CST and service tax assesses to the GST network," said the source.
The other three instalments of the first phase include development of application for registration of new taxpayers, filing of returns and payment. The source mentioned above said that application for three functions would be ready by February and operational by 1 April 2017.
The second phase (the first being development of the front-end of the IT infrastructure) of the software development--building the back-end for the states and Union Territories -would be ready by February next year and the same would be operational by 1 April 2017.
The back-end of the IT infrastructure is the interface that the states and the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has to build to fetch information from the system that GSTN is building.
The third and final phase of the software would be analytics, which would be ready once the system has enough data. This source from GSTN said would only be ready by end of next year.
On the preparation of the back-end of the IT infrastructure that the states are developing, thesource at the GSTN said that "we have taken stock of the preparations and we are sure all states would be with their systems on time."
He said that the most of rules of GST would be finalised by 30 September and the states would be able to prepare their software as per the new rules by February 2017.
Disclaimer : The news in the GST Corner is purely according to the information available in public domain and does not necessarily reflect the views of ICSI. Any person wishing to act on the basis of this document should do so only after cross checking with the original source.