GST Council might take into account pan-India rollout of biometric-based authentication for registration: CBIC

New Delhi: The GST Council might take up a proposal to make biometric-based Aadhaar authentication obligatory pan-India for suspicious individuals, looking for GST registration, CBIC chief Sanjay Kumar Agarwal mentioned on Friday. At the moment, two states — Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh — and the Union Territory of Puducherry have launched Aadhaar authentication of taxpayers on a pilot foundation.
“That’s giving encouraging outcomes. The variety of (registration) purposes has come down in Gujarat. That is a sign that with these measures, the individuals who had been utilizing different’s identities to create faux ITC corporations, are actually in examine.

“Going by the encouraging outcomes, it appears now an increasing number of states will go for it or it may be made uniformly relevant to all of the states as a result of in the end it’s the income which is impacted by faux registrations,” Agarwal informed PTI in an interview.

Items and Companies Tax (GST) authorities have to date been utilizing OTP-based Aadhaar authentication to determine the identification of the candidates, looking for registration.

Nevertheless, with cases coming to gentle whereby different individuals’s identification was misused to create bogus corporations for claiming enter tax credit score (ITC), the CBIC had determined to maneuver in the direction of biometric authentication below which in sure suspicious circumstances, the individual looking for registration can be requested to go to an Aadhaar centre to have his biometrics verified.

“The decision (on all states launching Aadhaar-based authentication) must be taken by the GST Council. Presently, no such proposal has gone to Council however in future, there could also be a proposal to GST Council to take a view on it,” Agarwal mentioned. The Central Board of Oblique Taxes and Customs (CBIC) chief mentioned the division has not too long ago launched a concerted drive towards the masterminds of syndicates, that are seeding faux ITCs. “Sure coverage measures have been taken as much as tighten the registration course of. Now, earlier than registration, we’re doing a danger evaluation and accordingly, the candidates are actually marked for bodily verification,” he mentioned.

For the reason that launch of GST on July 1, 2017, tax officers have detected faux ITC of Rs 1.42 lakh crore and recovered Rs 13,000 crore. As many as 1,350 individuals have been arrested for defrauding the exchequer.

Agarwal mentioned the tax officers are exchanging information with loads of different authorities businesses, together with the Earnings Tax Division, which has led to the identification of potential GST taxpayers.

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