The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs has identified 35,000 GST returns pertaining to fiscal 2017-18 to scrutinise for discrepancies and mismatches on liability, input tax credit and such, a senior tax official told BloombergQuint.
The cases were selected for scrutiny based on “specific risk parameters” as directed in a department notice in March. The notice laid down standard operating guidelines for such scrutiny.
FY18 was the first year the GST was levied in India in fact, for only nine months as it was introduced in July 2017. The time for issuing demand notices for filings in this period is short as these returns will get time-barred by November 2022.
It does not mean that all the cases under scrutiny are evasions, they could be filing errors, some as small as spelling errors, the tax official said. The scrutiny process is expected to take six months and should not be presumed to add to revenue, the official said on the condition of anonymity as details are not public yet.
In its March notice, the CBIC has detailed instructions “to ensure uniformity in selection/identification of returns for scrutiny, methodology of scrutiny of such returns and other related procedures”.
The process requires field officers to verify the correctness of the returns filed, inform the taxpayer of a discrepancy, if any. In the absence of a satisfactory explanation within 30 days, or more if allowed by the officer, appropriate action may be initiated. Timelines have been specified for the rest of the process.
Source: bloombergquint.com
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