One year after the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), a whopping 50% of businesses are still having trouble logging in and submitting information on the GST Network (GSTN), a survey has shown. A lot of businesses also feel that even after one year, the GST continues to be time-consuming and costly.
“Many startups and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) say that the GSTR filing process is lengthy and time consuming due to which they are not able to give enough time towards running their businesses well and are suffering losses,” a survey conducted by LocalCircles said. Apart from login issues, 22% said internet and connection issues with GSTN website bothered them and 28% said they were unable to understand the GSTN site information.
The GSTN is the technology backbone for GST and administers registration, invoice uploading, tax return filing and tax payment system under the new indirect tax regime run and managed by IT giant Infosys. In the second year of the GST, simplification of the filing process through a single filing system is expected from the government.
About 45% of businesses felt that their accounting cost has gone up by more than 25%, while 50% businesses said that the GST has been taking “significantly more” time than in the previous regime. However, 26% of businesses also said that their accounting cost has remained same as before.
In the wake of this major overhaul, the government set up GST helplines to help various traders, businessmen, manufacturers and suppliers to cope up with the confusion, however, only 31% received timely responses, 45% did not receive any response and 24% received acknowledgement but no response.
Even the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) chief Vanaja N Sarna recently said that even as the GST did not do bad for the first year, it may take a couple of years more to stabilise further. “It would take a couple years or maybe more to settle down completely,” Vanaja N Sarna told CNBC-TV18. The indirect tax regime was criticised for initial teething troubles and multiple tax rates.
