By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JULY 17, 2015: WHILE addressing the gathering at FICCI today, the CBEC Member, Mr V S Krishnan, said that the Central Government is committed to implement GST from April 1, 2016 and a model legislation for the States are being drafted.

He said that the GST Council would be constituted after the enactment of the Constitution Amendment Bill which is currently with the Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha.

He added that the reports of various Committees/sub-committees on Place of supply rules, IGST Model and Business processes relating to Registration, Refunds, Returns & Payments were awaiting approval.

Mr. Krishnan said that the issues under discussions were Rates of CGST, IGST & SGST; threshold limits of exemptions & compounding; List of exempted goods & services; Transitional provisions for treatment of accumulated CENVAT credit; Dispute resolution mechanism; Distribution of responsibility between Centre & State in implementing the three pillars of the compliance verification system – Return Scrutiny, Audit and Anti-evasion.

Mr. Navin Kumar, Chairman, GST Network (GSTN), said that the GST Automated System will be one-stop-shop for the key needs of taxpayers of the entire nation. The mandate of GSTN is to provide shared IT infrastructure and services to Central and State governments and taxpayers for implementation of GST. He added that implementation of GST needs a strong IT infra and services backbone, which enables capturing, processing and exchanging of information amongst stakeholders (taxpayers, state, central government, banks and RBI).

Mr. Kumar said that GST rollout strategy provides two options to the State Governments for creating GST infrastructure. In the first model, States/CBEC would develop their own backend modules and exchange data with GST common portal using APIs over a secured network. In the other, GSTN would develop backend modules for States and host the same at central data centre location. 13 states have exercised the option to use the backend systems of GSTN.