Congress leader Digvijaya Singh has asked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to consider amending clauses 37, 38, 39 and 44 of Chapter IX of The Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) Bill as he said it demanded that tax-paying merchants submit 37 forms in a year, up from four that they gave every quarter at present.
How would such a law, Mr. Singh asked Mr. Jaitley in a letter dated April 7, 2017, “improve” India's global ranking in “ease of doing business”, something the government had been promising.
He also pointed out that a mistake in one return would lead to a mismatch because of which the tax payer would be deprived of the benefit of input credit.
These provisions would defeat the very purpose of GST and on each transaction, tax would be levied, Mr. Singh said, stressing it would have a cascading effect resulting in inflation.
The Congress released copies of the communication between the two on the issue.
Jaitley’s reply
The Finance Minister, in his reply to Mr. Singh, dated April 18, wrote that in the proposed GST design the tax payer has to file only his initial return on the 10th of the next month while the other returns on invoice matching and availment of ITC credit are “auto-populated.”
