GST: Officials slap notices on non-filers in Telangana

Hyderabad: The four GST commissionerates in Telangana state are gearing up to bring non-filers into the tax fold. The officials have already started issuing notices to those who didn’t file in time. Telangana recorded the highest ever tax collections in April since GST came into force on July 1, 2017. With increasing volumes, the number of non-filers is also on the rise.

“We have over three lakh GST assesses in the state and tax compliance is 77 per cent as against national average of 76 per cent. The department will take action against non-filers if they don’t respond in time. We’ll also impose penalty on them.” said an official at GST Bhavan here.

GST collections in Telangana for April were Rs 716 crore CGST, Rs 1,026 crore SGST and Rs 1,125 crore IGST. The total GST collections, including Cess, were Rs 3,380 crore in April, Rs 2,796 crore in March, Rs 2,641 crore in February and Rs 2,734 crore in January this year. For May, returns can be filed on June 26.

GST officials are carrying out special drives such as the ongoing fortnight of refund clearance which began from May 31, awareness programmes for assesses and training workshops for GST practitioners. Some assesses get confused while filing multiple returns and some miss out filing the summary return i.e. GSTR-3B. The department gives non-filers three days to comply. The department’s help desks (seva kendras) will also help them calculate the liability of the tax component, said the official.

Another major problem that assesses face is mismatch of data in GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B. The officials will also ask assesses to substantiate the data provided in the returns. On the other side, the transitional credit claims are mounting and the department should focus on this, said an entrepreneur. It is expected that the cumulative number of such claims is over 60,000 so far.

The officials will calculate the tax component based on the information and material available at the business premises. “If assesses don’t respond to our notices or ignore to file returns, we calculate tax based on the previous data and impose penalty accordingly.” said an official.

GST Council has four commissionerates in TS. North TS comes under Medchal Commissionerate, Secunderabad commissionerate's jurisdiction covers Uppal and Warangal, Hyderabad Commissionerate has mostly old MCH limits, while Ranga Reddy Commissionerate covers South Telangana.