APRIL 04, 2018

By Vijay Kumar

THE Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has become the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC). The CBEC was created under the Central Boards of Revenue Act, 1963with effect from 01.01.1964. The 2018 Finance Act, in Section 160 stipulates,

160. In the Central Boards of Revenue Act, 1963, with effect from the date on which the Finance Bill, 2018 receives the assent of the President, —

(a) "the Central Board of Excise and Customs" shall be renamed as "the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs";

(b) throughout the Act, for the words "Excise and Customs", wherever they occur, the words "Indirect Taxes and Customs" shall be substituted, and such other consequential amendments as the rules of grammar may require shall also be made.

The Finance Bill 2018 received the assent of the President on 29.03.2018 and, therefore, from that date the CBEC has become the CBIC. The official website of the Board still calls it

though we are informed that:

Maybe, they were so busy with the simple GST that they did not have enough time to change the name and logo. Anyway, what's in a name?

The First Circular issued by the name-changed Board was a GST one. In the heading, the Circular got the name of the Board absolutely correct as ' Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs', but in para 4 it mentions, "In GIC meetings convened to address IT issues or IT glitches, the CEO, GSTN and the DG (Systems), CBEC shall participate in these meetings as special invitees. " Old habits die hard and for some time we have to assume that whenever, wherever CBEC is mentioned, it means CBIC, not that it makes any difference to the taxpayer who has many other things to worry about.

CBIC has issued Circular No.39/13/2018-GST, dated 03.04.2018 on Setting up of an IT Grievance Redressal Mechanism to address the grievances of taxpayers due to technical glitches on GST Portal . The Circular explains that:

- It has been decided to put in place an IT-Grievance Redressal Mechanism to address the difficulties faced by a section of taxpayers owing to technical glitches on the GST portal and the relief that needs to be given to them.

- Problems which are proposed to be addressed through this mechanism would essentially be those which relate to Common Portal (GST Portal) and affect a large section of taxpayers. Where the problem relates to individual taxpayer, due to localised issues such as non-availability of internet connectivity or failure of power supply, this mechanism shall not be available.

- Any issue which needs to be addressed through this mechanism shall be identified by GSTN and the method of resolution approved by the GST Implementation Committee (GIC) which shall act as the IT Grievance Redressal Committee. In GIC meetings convened to address IT issues or IT glitches, the CEO, GSTN and the DG (Systems), CBEC shall participate in these meetings as special invitees.

- Where an IT related glitch has been identified as the reason for failure of a taxpayer in filing of a return or form prescribed in the law, the consequential fine and penalty would also be required to be waived. GST Council has delegated the power to the IT Grievance Redressal Committee to recommend waiver of fine or penalty, in case of an emergency, to the Government in terms of section 128 of the CGST Act, 2017 under such mitigating circumstances as are identified by the committee. All such notifications waiving fine or penalty shall be placed before GST Council.

- A large number of taxpayers could not complete the process of TRAN-1 filing either at the stage of original or revised filing as they could not digitally authenticate the TRAN-1s due to IT related glitches. As a result, a large number of such TRAN-1s are stuck in the system. GSTN shall identify such taxpayers who could not file TRAN-1 on the basis of electronic audit trail. It has been decided that all such taxpayers, who tried but were not able to complete TRAN-1 procedure (original or revised) of filing them on or before 27.12.2017 due to IT-glitch, shall be provided the facility to complete TRAN-1 filing. It is clarified that the last date for filing of TRAN 1 is not being extended in general and only these identified taxpayers shall be allowed to complete the process of filing TRAN-1.

- The taxpayer shall not be allowed to amend the amount of credit in TRAN-1 during this process vis-à-vis the amount of credit which was recorded by the taxpayer in the TRAN-1, which could not be filed.

The Board is keen to put in place the much-wanted grievance redressal mechanism, but why redressal? Redress would mean the same thing. Somewhere around the long line of legislation and simplification, our babus made redressal out of redress. The Constitution, the ultimate Law uses the word 'redress' as follows:

1. Article 350. Language to be used in representations for Redress of grievances .- Every person shall be entitled to submit a representation for the Redress of any grievance to any officer or authority of the Union or a State in any of the languages used in the Union or in the State, as the case may be.

2. Article 371D(4): An order made under clause (3) may-

(a) authorise the Administrative Tribunal to receive representations for the Redress of grievances relating to any matter within its jurisdiction as the President may specify in the order and to make such orders thereon as the Administrative Tribunal deems fit;

The Constitution wanted redress of the grievance not redressal. It has not used the word redressal at all, though during the debates in the Constituent Assembly, a member used it once saying, "They should not hereafter be denied the vote and the opportunity to get Redressal of their grievances."

There is a Grievance Redress Mechanism in Central Government called Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS), where citizens can seek redress.

Redressal or redress, what the assessees expect from the government is a proper address or is it addressal?

All the concerned officers must have heaved a huge collective sigh of relief as the e-waybills rolled out smoothly on to the highways and other ways of India. The Government released a new '2018 E-Way Bill System User Manual' Version 1.2 intended for registered taxpayers under GST and un-registered transporters, who are the main stakeholders of e-Way Bill system under GST. Before you generate the e-waybill, it would be prudent to read and understand the User Manual. To start with, you should learn by-heart the following abbreviations:

I envy the truck driver who knows all this and more.

Objectives: The manual explains the objectives of the e-waybill as

- Single e-Way Bill for movement of the goods throughout the country.

- To prevent the evasion of tax.

- Hassle free movement of goods across India.

- Tracking the movement of goods with e-Way Bill number.

- Easier verification of the e-Way Bill by officers.

The last para of the Manual made interesting reading: (My comments in brackets)

API Interface - The best method for the large tax payers/transporters, who generate the large number of e-Way Bills, is API interface . (we are told API is Application Program Interface; what is API interface - Application Program Interface interface?) This is site-to-site integration of the systems for eway Bill generation. In this method, the tax payer system will directly request the E-way Bill system while generating invoice in his system and get the e-Way Bill number. This can be printed on the Invoice document and movement of the goods can be started. This avoids duplicate data entry and eliminates complete data entry mistakes. To use this facility, the tax payers have to request the department for this service. This facility is available only for the selected large tax payers or transporters, who generate the (why 'the' here?) more than the defined invoices in a month. This defined invoices in a month will be changed as per the required (is it requirement) by the government ('from' missing) time-to-time.

And in Chapter 11 of the User Manual pertaining to Registration, it is mentioned that the E-Way Bill system provides the users to generate the e-Way Bills from different modes; that one of them is the web based mode, which has been explained in chapter 5 and the other modes are SMS based, android app based, API based and Suvidha based. The chapter explains the intricacies of registration by the SMS and Android app based modes but as regards the rest mentions the following -

The Government has also come up with a new FAQ on the e-way bill. Look at this bright clarification.

Q: Why the transporter needs to enroll on the e-way bill system?

A: There may be some transporters, who are not registered under the Goods and Services Tax Act, but such transporters cause the movement of goods for their clients. They need to enroll on the e-way bill portal to get 15 digit Unique Transporter Id.

There seems to be no way like the e-way.