Gearing Up For GST

- Swati Rana

Pegged as India's largest tax reform since Independence, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) system will finally roll out from July 1 this year. In preparation for this major milestone, the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) has been created to provide IT infrastructure and services to central and state governments, taxpayers and other stakeholders to facilitate implementation of GST across the country. Another step towards smoothing the transition are GST Suvidha Providers (GSPs), which are identified private agencies who would facilitate taxpayers’ access to the GSTN. GSPs have a robust agreement with the GSTN and provide a tunnel to the taxpayer to submit their data to the GSTN.

Explaining the role of a GSP, Suresh Nair, Partner – Indirect Tax, EY India said, “The companies have to submit transaction wise data of sales, stock transfers, and service provided which need to be submitted by July 10 (GSTR-1). Sales data uploaded by the suppliers will be available on July 11 and need to be confirmed and uploaded after doing reconciliation of mismatch, if any, such as mismatch in invoice number, in-voice date, invoice value, input tax, etc by July 15 (GSTR-2). The tax liability is to be calculated based on GSTR-1 and GSTR-2. GST is to be paid and uploaded by July 20 (GSTR-3) return (monthly return). For a taxpayer having a large volume of transaction level data required for return filing, accessing the return filing system of GSTN directly through the GST web portal could be a challenge. In such cases, the taxpayer can connect with the GSTN through third party service providers– commonly known as GSP.”