GSTN chief allays taxpayers' fears on data mix-up on GST portal

GSTN chief says enough protection has been taken to guard against any overlapping

GST Network today allayed concerns of mixing up of taxpayers' data on the portal, saying enough protection has been taken to guard against any overlapping.

The Mumbai division of the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) had received complaints from certain taxpayers that the GST portal is mixing up their data with others.

GST Network (GSTN), which provides technology backbone for the new indirect tax regime, said instances of one taxpayer's information being shown to another have happened only at the level of individual tax consultants and not the GST portal.

"There is not even the slightest possibility of data on the GST portal being mixed up. Taxpayers can file their tax invoices, returns and other details in complete confidence and without fear of their data being shown to anyone else," GSTN Chairman Navin Kumar said.

In a statement, GSTN said tax consultants work on activation and migration of provisional IDs of several of their clients simultaneously by opening several windows on the same browser and the information gets stored in the cache of the computer.

"Thus, when the multiple provisional IDs are being created by the tax consultants, the common form is getting mapped to last provisional ID that was activated, resulting in showing wrong data being posted against a particular provisional ID," it said.

Hence, this is not a problem with the robust GST system, but only at the level of data entry at the taxpayer's side, GSTN asserted.

The IT backbone of the GST portal is extremely sound and can handle large amounts of data without any possibility of data overlap. The portal can handle as many as 3 billion transactions every month, it added.

Certain taxpayers had complained that when they were logging into their accounts, they were diverted to some other account on the GST portal and the data of another taxpayer was being displayed.

The CBEC has asked tax consultants not to open more than one enrollment or registration case at one time.

"After completing one case, clear the cache memory of the computer system before initiating second registration/ enrolment process," CBEC had said.

Meanwhile, GSTN is organising a webinar on 'Composition Levy Scheme in GST' tomorrow to answer taxpayers' questions on features, rate of tax of the composition levy, eligibility criterion and relevant conditions, among other things.

The participants will have to register on NeGD (National E Governance Division) portal.