The four commissionerates of Central Board of Excise & Customs (CBEC) in Telangana are being reorganised and the field formations strengthened as part of a nationwide exercise for the upcoming Goods and Services Tax regime.
The idea is to be closer to the tax payers and provide prompt service, Commissioner, Customs, Central Excise and Service Tax, M. Srinivas said on Wednesday. The new location codes have been received and work to map assessees to them is underway.
Pointing out that in GST regime “we need to cater to not only manufacturers and services providers, but also traders,” he said the reorganisation sought to address the existing disparity of the commissionerates either having a concentration of service providers and traders and less of industry or vice versa.
The commissionerates will be reorganised as Hyderabad, Secunderabad, Ranga Reddy and Medchal.
Speaking to presspersons after addressing a full house seminar on GST organised by trade and industry body FTAPCCI, he said the focus is to have a Field Formation in every district. The number of Range Offices will increase from 120 to 150 and the divisions from 23 to 30. The process of identifying buildings for the new facilities is almost complete.
The Board — to be renamed Central Board of Indirect Taxes & Customs — has started deploying senior officers, Mr. Srinivas said, adding he has been deployed to the Medchal Commissionerate whose jurisdiction included Sangareddy, Warangal, Karimnagar, Mancherial besides Medchal.
The process of deploying staff for the new offices would take effect once a notification is issued. On adding more staff, he said the existing number is sufficient. The Service Tax Commissionerate is also be abolished under GST. With increase in the Field Formations the focus, he added, would be on having more officers in the field.
On the number of assessees under GST in the State, he said it is not yet known. The reorganisation, he added, is based on the VAT (value added tax) base. Central processing cells and GST Seva Kendra were being set up to provide information to the assessees on the migration process and in filing returns.
Additional Commissioner of Commercial Taxes Revathi Rohini said there were two lakh VAT assessees in the State, which could drop to around 1.8 lakh as a result of exemption and composition scheme under GST.
On check-posts, she said 12 out of 16 such in the State were expected to be done away with in the GST regime. The integrated check-posts that has officials from various departments would remain. Commercial Taxes Department would withdraw its staff from the checkposts and introduce mobile check points. It would deploy analytics to check evasion and frauds.
