the goan I network
PANAJI
Commissioner of Commercial Taxes, Dipak M Bandekar, has said that with the help of better systems the government is able to identify which dealers are not paying Goods-and-Services-Tax (GST) and also that harsh penalties will be imposed upon them for not paying the tax.
Bandekar said, “Today, we have data of those dealers, who have made purchases, but don’t shown any sales. If a dealer is not showing any sales after making bulk purchases, he is avoiding GST and we issue a show-cause notice to him.” He continued, “Several government departments also file returns. Based on this, we can figure out contractors to whom the government is paying. Then, we can check if they are paying GST or not. If they are not doing so, we can take corrective action.”
When Commercial Taxes Department figures out a defaulting dealer, it sends a show-cause notice to him for not paying GST. In case, the dealer pays his tax due after receiving the notice along with the interest, then it is fine.
However, if he doesn’t pay GST even after receiving a show-cause notice, then under the law, he has to pay an amount equal to his tax obligation as penalty. Bandekar further said that his department has issued show-cause notice to a number of businessmen for either not paying GST or for paying lesser GST than their actual tax liability.
He further said that under the GST regime around 10% dealers are still unregistered in the state. This means of all the businesses, which should be paying GST, 10% are still not registered and hence are not paying their tax obligation. Under value-added-tax (VAT) regime, 40% dealers were not registered, which means that the compliance under GST regime is a lot better than under VAT regime.
