By TIOL News Service

HYDERABAD, AUGUST 07, 2009: THE first of the two Post Budget Seminars organized by TIOL in association with Tax law research Group was held in Hyderabad today. Mr. V. Sridhar, The Chairman, Central Board of Excise and Customs graced the occasion as the Chief Guest. The other dignitaries who graced the occasion are Mr. S.S. Khan, Member, Central Board of Direct Taxes, Mr. Ahmed Hussain, Chief Commissioner, Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax, Hyderabad, Mr. Gautam Bhattacharya, JS (TRU) and Mr. D P SenGupta, Former CCIT and Former JS (TPL).

Mr. K. Vijay Kumar, Editor in Chief, Taxindiaonline.com welcomed the Chief Guest and the other dignitaries. Mr. G. Prabhakara Sastry, Convener, Tax Law Research Group, welcomed the delegates who have come from all over the country to attend the interactive work shop.

Mr. Shailendra Kumar, Managing Editor, Taxindiaonline.com initiated the interactive session by drawing attention of the official dignitaries and the participating delegates on the lack of information and confusion about the date of assent of the Finance Bill, 2009 which is crucial for the trade and the Government to implement and give effect to the amendments. He also spoke about the lack of transparency in the Government on the modalities of implementation of GST, though the deadline of April 1, 2010 was announced by the Finance Minister in his Budget Speech.

Mr. S S Khan, Member, Central Board Direct Taxes gave an overview of the tax collection mechanism and incentives made available to the assessees for tax compliance and highlighted the department’s initiative in electronic processing of information on a centralized basis at Bangalore which will be operational on a full scale in a few months from now.

In this regard, on a query raised by one of the delegates regarding acceptability of scanned copies of returns through emails instead of sending the hard copies by post to the centralized processing centre within the stipulated deadline, Mr. Khan informed the delegate that the suggestion is not feasible since there are more than four million assessees in the Income Tax department and storing such huge data in image form is practically difficult given the shortcomings in the existing IT infrastructure.

Delivering his keynote address, Mr. Sridhar, Chairman, Central Board of Excise and Customs, highlighted the challenges involved in implementation of GST by the Central Government and the State Governments as the same requires a Constitutional Amendment for introduction of suitable legislation. He also informed the delegates that various sub-groups of the Empowered Group of Finance Ministers have been working on various issued relating to GST.

Among the issues to be sorted out includes review of the threshold limits for Central Excise, VAT and Service Tax, possible explosion of the number of assessees and the attendant manpower requirements for a successful roll out and implementation of GST. He also mentioned that other important aspects like taxation of different categories of services by both Central and State Governments, challenges of implementing the GST at both the Central level and the State level are being specifically looked into to arrive at a consensus.

Mr. Gautam Bhattacharya answered various queries on service tax matters raised by the delegates in the post lunch interactive session. As there were a flurry of queries on important issues from the delegates, TIOL requested the delegates to send their queries through email which will be compiled and sent to the JS (TRU) and the Chairman, CBEC for their responses.

Mr. D P SenGupta, Former CCIT and Former JS (TPL) spoke about the provisions related to Income Tax in the Finance Bill, 2009. Mr. Jai Kumar, Advocate, Swamy Associates gave a presentation on some of the interesting issues emanating from the Finance Bill, 2009. Mr. Joseph Prabhakar, Advocate spoke about VAT related issues on this occasion.

Another Seminar is being held tomorrow at Visakhapatnam. Mr. Gautam Battacharya, JS (TRU) and Mr. D P SenGupta, Former CCIT and Former JS (TPL) will grace the occasion and address the queries on Service Tax and Income Tax issues. This is another opportunity for all those who missed today’s seminar to attend the Seminar to be held at Visakhapatnam tomorrow.