A war room to test the integration of Telangana government Treasury with GST Network (GSTN), the Information Technology backbone for the smooth functioning of Goods and Services Tax regime, when it comes into force on July 1, has started functioning.
Three senior officers are part of the war room which has been testing interface of Treasury with GSTN and Reserve Bank of India, the core banker to the system, with “dummy data”. The system has been well integrated, tested and is ready for launch, an official told The Hindu .
Secure transfers
The objective was to put in place a secure file transfer protocol because crores of transactions will be handled by the platform every day. Depending on the volume of transactions, the data will be “pulled” by GSTN and “pushed” by the Treasury in either one batch or more on a daily basis. All invoices and challans pertaining to GST will be generated on GSTN which will be a unique and complex IT initiative. “In other words, every payment will be made through GSTN”.
The State Treasury will get information about GST payouts from two sources — GSTN and the RBI. Any mismatch in data will be rectified by transfer of files back and forth.
Teething problems
Officials expected teething problems for a couple of months after the roll out but, on the whole, did not expect any technical hassles, come July 1.
Revenue Secretary Somesh Kumar expected the GST to be applicable in the State to about ₹ 18,000 crore as VAT and other taxes on products other than liquor and petroleum, which are both outside of the purview of GST, was ₹19,397 crore in 2016-17. The tax revenue from liquor was ₹ 8,320 crore and petroleum ₹ 7,514 crore.
Petroleum tax
As the Centre had allowed the States to decide tax rates for liquor and petroleum, they were fixed at 70% other than duty and 28% respectively in Telangana.
Officials said the GST regime was okay with Telangana from the point of view of revenues because the Central government had assured compensation to State for phase out of VAT.
