Assocham seeks deferment of GST implementation

New Delhi, June 17 (IANS) Business chamber Assocham has asked the central government to defer the implementation of the new GST regime.

The pan India Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime is slated to be implemented from July 1.

"We, Assocham, applaud the effort being made by the government to implement GST at the earliest. We also compliment the effort being made to set up working groups to address concerns of specific industries," said D. S. Rawat, Secretary General, Assocham, in a letter to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

"Significant amount of work has been done on the GST front, however, there are various issues which still need to be looked at before GST can be implemented successfully," read the letter dated June 17.

Assocham pitched its case by quoted the GSTN (GST Network) CEO, who has said that the network might not be fully operational by July 1, 2017.

"It has been stated that certain deficiencies in the return formats resulting in glitches in operation of GSTN were detected during a beta test done about a month back. Consequently, the return formats were completely revised, which in turn led to certain major changes in the IT software," the letter read.

"Therefore, it has been clearly stated by CEO that the return module will be ready only by end-July, which will be before August, the month of filing returns."

Apart from the GSTN issues, Assocham in the letter pointed out that many existing assesses have not entirely migrated to GST.

"System glitches during migration process raises questions as to the ability of the system to withstand huge traffic in GST. During the current phase of GST migration for existing assesses, the server was constantly under maintenance," the letter read.

"It also raises questions as to whether this system can survive in the GST era when it had undergone maintenance during the second phase of migration when the traffic was restricted only to migration, not even to the registration."