As Goods and Services Tax (GST) continues to haunt the traders, thousands of consumers are slowly downloading an App that verifies and simplifies the doubts on whether the trader is collecting the tax legally or illegally.
Two weeks after the App ‘GSTVerify’ was launched, about 80,000 people have already downloaded it on their mobiles to check whether their tax is being collected legally and if so whether it is reaching the government. “There is a tremendous response and the downloads are increasing day by day,” says Raghu Kiran, Joint Commissioner, GST, Telangana, the man behind developing the App.
People are not even aware that some traders should not collect GST despite so much talk about the new tax that occupies business as well as political headlines constantly. What this App helps the customers is to identify the traders and their eligibility to collect the tax. The App doesn’t seek any personal details of the downloader and hence is safe. Mr. Raghu, an engineer turned IRS officer, says people can verify the genuinity of the trader by entering the GST number on the receipt in the App and the query after searching the public database flashes the information about the trader’s profile. “This will also drive out unnecessary apprehensions about the newly introduced tax.”
As per the GST norms, traders whose turnover is ₹1 crore per year, should not collect tax from the consumers and there are about 18 lakh customers who fall in this category called as Composition Tax Payers. These traders are collecting GST from the consumers taking advantage of their ignorance but not remitting to the government. Instead of the GST number they are using some random number that consumers would never be able to decipher. GSTVerify App can crack those details. at the press of a button for the consumer.
If consumers want to fix the cheating traders all that they need to do is take a picture of the bill and forward it to ‘gstverify.co.in @gmail.com’.
