Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) is a Section 8 (under new companies Act, not for profit companies are governed under section 8), non-Government, private limited company. It was incorporated on March 28, 2013. The Government of India holds 24.5% equity in GSTN and all States of the Indian Union, including NCT of Delhi and Puducherry, and the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers (EC), together hold another 24.5%. Balance 51% equity is with non-Government financial institutions. The Company has been set up primarily to provide IT infrastructure and services to the Central and State Governments, tax payers and other stakeholders for implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). The Authorised Capital of the company is Rs. 10,00,00,000 (Rupees ten crore only).
Creation of common and shared IT infrastructure for functions facing taxpayers has been assigned to GSTN and these are filing of registration application, filing of return, creation of challan for tax payment, settlement of IGST payment (like a clearing house), generation of business intelligence and analytics. All statutory functions to be performed by tax officials under GST like approval of registration, assessment, audit, appeal, enforcement etc. will remain with the respective tax departments.
He can choose online option under which, he will have to choose one of the agency banks (i.e. banks authorized by RBI to collect GST on their behalf) from the dropdown menu and after that he will be taken to the website of chosen bank to make payment by providing user ID and password of bank. After completion of payment, he will be brought back to GST portal from where he can download the paid challan, which is generated by GST System on confirmation from the Bank.
The other option of tax payment is to print the challan and present the same in the relevant bank for ‘Over the Counter Payment’ (OTC). The bank after realising the payment will transfer the money to RBI and send confirmation of payment to GST Portal for accounting.
Under GST, there will be common return for CGST, SGST and IGST, eliminating the need to file separate tax returns with Central and state GST authorities. Checking of claim of Input Tax Credit (ITC) is one of the fundamental pillars of GST, for which data of Business to Business (B2B) invoices have to be uploaded and matched. The Common GST Portal created and managed by GSTN will do this matching on the basis of invoice level data filed as part of return by all taxpayers. Similar exercise will be done for inter-state supplies where goods or services will move from the state of origin to the state of consumption and so will the taxes. The claim of IGST and its utilization will be settled based on returns filed at the Common GST portal.
Under GST, the registration of taxpayers will be common under Central and State GST and hence one place of filing application for the same i.e. the Common GST portal. The application so received will be checked for its completeness by the GST portal, which will also carry out validation of data like PAN from CBDT, CIN/DIN from MCA and Aadhaar of promoters, if provided, from UIDAI. After completion of validation, the registration application will be shared with respective central and state tax authorities. Query of tax authorities, if any and their final decision will be communicated to GST portal which in turn will communicate the same to the taxpayer.
The Common GST Portal, as explained in brief above, will be the single interface for all taxpayers from any part of the country. Only in case where a taxpayer is picked up for scrutiny or audit, and such cases are expected to be small in number, he will interface with the respective tax authority issuing the notice under the Act. For all other cases, which is expected to be around 95%, the Common GST Portal will be the only taxpayer interface.
The design of GST systems is based on role based access. The taxpayer can access his own data through identified applications like registration, return, view ledger etc. The tax official having jurisdiction, as per GST law, can access the data. Data can be accessed by audit authorities as per law. No other entity can have any access to data.