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NEW DELHI Following Income Tax and Customs, the GST Council on Saturday recommended a proposal for decriminalisation of certain offences. However, there will be no change in offences of fake invoices.
The Council deferred deliberations on reports of Group of Ministers (GoM) on Appellate Tribunal and Data sharing to the next meeting which is expected post budget. The other GoM report on Online Gaming, Casinos and Horse racing were not part of the agenda.
Announcing the outcomes of the 48th meeting chaired by Finance Minister Nirmala Sithraman, Revenue Secretary and Secretary to the Council Sanjay Malhotra said: “Recommendation is to raise the minimum threshold of tax amount for launching prosecution under GST from ₹1 crore to ₹2 crore, except for the offence of issuance of invoices without supply of goods or services or both. Another recommendation is to reduce the compounding amount from the present range of 50-150 per cent of tax amount to the range of 25-100 per cent.”
It has also been proposed to decriminalise certain offences under Section 132 of CGST Act, 2017. These include obstruction or preventing any officer in discharge of his duties; deliberate tempering of material evidence and failure to supply the information.
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Commenting on the recommendation, M S Mani, Partner with Deloitte said “It is necessary to gradually increase it further so that only very serious high-value cases are subjected to the rigors of prosecution.”
Measures for widening tax base and increase compliance
Johri said that the measures for widening include data sharing with various agencies and also to examine data from power generation companies and property tax deduction. “Pilot projects for these measures are being taken or planned by the State Governments. Like Maharashtra is doing pilot related with property tax, Madhya Pradesh is going with data from discoms and PAN-based project being undertaken by Gujarat,” he said.
To improve the compliance, the Council recommended proposal to conduct a pilot in Gujarat for Biometric-based Aadhaar authentication and risk-based physical verification of registration applicants. This will help in tackling the menace of fake and fraudulent registrations.
Similarly, PAN-linked mobile number and e-mail address (fetched from CBDT database) to be captured and recorded in FORM GST REG-01 and OTP-based verification to be conducted at the time of registration on such PAN-linked mobile number and email address to restrict misuse of PAN.
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