Hyderabad: The commercial taxes department (CTD) has asked the GST Council to resolve the problem related to refund of input tax credit (ITC) for exporters. Mr Somesh Kumar, CTD principal secretary, has asked the Centre to take immediate measures to resolve the problem.
Speaking at national conclave on GST organized by Assocham here on Wednesday, Mr Kumar said: “Exporters are not happy with the refund mechanism for claiming ITC. Even after one year of GST implementation, refunds have not become seamless. Exporters are asking the state government to take it up to the Centre. I request the GST Council to immediately resolve this issue.”
He said false claims for ITC were another major concern.
The problem with ITC refunds is with the manual intervention in the filing mechanism. It’s estimated that the blocked amount accounts for five per cent of turnover and it’s posing working capital shortage for exporters, said an exporter. Telangana state added 37 per cent new tax payers under GST taking the total number of assessees to 3.5 lakh. New registrations of property documents rose 20.73 per cent in 2016-17. “Interestingly, consideration value is more than market value,” said Mr Kumar. Telangana GST revenues were Rs 23,014 crore during July 2017-June 2018 as against Rs 19,955 crore in the previous corresponding period. This is a 15.33 per cent growth under GST, Mr Kumar said.
He said 34 lakh e-Way bills were generated in the state against 10 crore nationwide. “Commercial taxes grew by 18.5 per cent to Rs 10,879 crore during April 2018-June 2018. The growth rate was marginally slowed down when compared with 19.36 per cent growth in 2017-18, in which TS recorded '42,054 crore,” Mr Kumar said.
Mr Kumar expressed concern over the prevailing ‘bill of exchange’ or circular trading practice. “We have to control bill/circular trading. Another problem is that invoice matching has not started. To make proper analytics, we need data, which is not available to the state. Reverse charge mechanism is not operational. Penalty is also minimal, affecting filing of returns,” said Mr Kumar.
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