Chennai: The Goods and Services Tax (GST) – India’s largest tax form, though implemented six months ago still did not completely fall into place due to unattended technical glitches. The GST website, according to its users crashes at least three times a day due to non responsive server, putting them into hardship.
“There are a lot of issues when it comes to registration. Whenever, the help desk is approached, they ask for a complaint attached with a screenshot and never reply thereafter. Also, if the registration process stops because of a missing document, even after it is attached, we receive no updates. The process that usually takes a week gets delayed by another week at least,” said E. Ravi, IT advisor.
Businesses must use the website or the mobile app run by GST for filing the returns and everything related to the regime. While the traders took a lot of time to get accustomed to the new tax filing system, the problems in the portal has added to their woes.
“At least two to three times a day, the server is down for maintenance. Moreover, the e-forms that ha-ve to be updated according to the GST act are still pending. Also, the service ac-counting code which gives the tariff of an item is not been updated,” rued L.T. Anand, tax practitioner.
Numerous businesses have reported issues while logging in to file the returns. The process is even delayed by two to three hours due to the network delay, they say, adding that temporary log in codes would not work most of the times.
Almost all return deadlines have been pushed back by the government. The auditors said they were confused when the government had asked them to file in GSTR 2, which is filed to match a business’s purchases to its supplier’s sales and calculate claimable input credit.
Now, they have stopped everything for a brief period. This threw into disarray the return filing process. The officials had said they were still working on resolving the issues and most of them would be cleared in three months.
