Refund, a big challenge under GST

It's been a year since the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, the country's indirect tax reform, was implemented across the country (On July 1, 2017), but still the glitches galore and exporters are facing the brunt.

"The IGST (Integrated GST) Refund on exports were not processed on time due to the ambiguity surrounding the procedure for claiming of these refunds. Exporters' funds were stuck with the tax authorities, and this had an adverse effect on the exporters' working capital during the FY 2017-18," said Archit Gupta, Founder and CEO of ClearTax.

The tax and compliance platform in February this year introduced ready-to-use GST-compliant billing and filing solution.

Gupta adds that in the era of digitisation, for the refund to exporters the applicants need to visit the regional GST authority in their jurisdiction for processing the said refund. "We hope, in the coming days, this process too, gets digitised," he added.

Though the government selected around 73 GST Suvidha Providers (GSPs), only 15 are active now. Pune-based GSP Vayana Network says there is a need for simplified return process, strong and robust IT system, among others.

Amit Parmar, SVP, Vayana GSP said the government should improve the compliance level. "Overall, IT preparedness has been the issue. At present, only close to 70% of the registered businesses are filing the returns, this needs to be improved," Parmar said.

The GST E-way bill is a major concern for most of the companies which are regularly into the business of transporting goods and sending material over the locations, the transport company is also trying to figure out how it would deal with the GST E-way bill provisions, said Rakesh Bordia of Prequate Consulting.

He added that the clients have now settled down with GST and the implementation has been adapted over the year.

"The GST rollout it seems was done with very little homework both at operational and technical ends. It must take note of the fact that policy must be designed to reduce the compliance burden on the taxpayers. This is fundamental to the operation of a unified indirect tax system. The government should learn from UK’s implementation and try and mimic the success and speed that they have been able to re-inforce," he added.