NT NETWORK
PANAJI
Commissioner of customs, central excise and service tax, Goa, K Anapazhakan on Saturday said that connectivity is the single-most major hitch in the implementation of goods and services tax regime, especially in the remote villages and some states including those in the northeastern region.
“GST works in the technology driven administration, and a trader has to upload everything on the GST system/ portal,” he added, pointing out that this is the exact reason why his department is continuously organising GST awareness camps all over Goa.
Anapazhakan, who was delivering talk during ‘Vartalaap’ (conversation), a media outreach programme held in the city by the Press Information Bureau, further said that although the system driven administration will now speed up due to the implementation of the GST, all invoices would need to be generated and uploaded on the GST portal so that at every level the credit would be available to the users/ customers.
Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for AYUSH, Shripad Naik, who inaugurated the event, said that all the glitches emerging from the implementation of the GST would be done away with. He also observed that various taxes existing in the country had made their collection difficult for the government, and the single tax in the form of GST would solve this problem.
Anapazhakan stated that the traders in the country will now have to totally reorient their products.
“Uniformity and certainty will be two aspects of the GST helping the traders a lot,” he maintained, while informing that check-posts and toll booths at the border would be removed, thus helping the goods to travel across the country in a seamless manner.
Describing the GST as an indirect tax reform in the country, commissioner of customs, central excise and service tax, Goa said that this destination-based consumption tax is not a simple name changer but a major game changer.
“The GST subsumes 17 taxes into itself and ends the era of multiple taxes, multiple authorities and in turn filing multiple returns, thus ensuring that the cost of administration comes down,” he mentioned, pointing out that the GST is going to bring down cost of the goods by a minimum of 4 per cent to 5 per cent.
“With the implementation of the GST, there would be uniformity in taxation all over the country,” Anapazhakan said, adding that the GST will have different rates namely 0 per cent, 5 per cent, 12 per cent, 18 per cent and 28 per cent.
“In the GST regime, 81 per cent of the items will fall under below-18 per cent rate slabs,” he stated, noting “The GST Council has consciously decided that these rates would be less or equal to the previously existing rates of the said goods, so that it would not affect common people and the ultimate winner would be the consumer.”
Deputy director of PIB Vinod Kumar welcomed.
Assistant director of PIB, Balaji Prabhugaonkar was also present.