Gujarat begins migration process under GST

Gujarat government on Tuesday began migrating commercial tax payers from existing tax platform such as value added tax (VAT) to the new goods and service tax (GST) platform.

According to deputy chief minister of Gujarat, Nitin Patel, the state will enroll about 466,000 traders on Goods and Services Taxpayer Identification Number.

"We are well prepared to implement GST on April 1, 2017 and as part of it the state government has started migration process for commercial taxpayers. As of now businesses registered till August 31, 2016 will migrate on GST platform while the rest can be migrated from January 2017," said Nitin Patel, deputy chief minister of Gujarat.

The state government claimed that the trading community need not engage in any physical transaction for migration on GST platform. Once user login into the VAT portal, a popup window with one time login and password will appear and it will direct the user to the GST portal where the user can fill required fields and submit scanned documents.

"Union finance department has been providing technical guidance to the states and we are also providing guidance to the traders. Moreover, we will jointly work with various trade associations to assist small traders and businessmen for the migration. Commercial tax department has started special help desk for this purpose," said Patel.

With provision of special incentives to industries being disabled after GST implementation, the state government may make special provisions to give incentives to the industries in the state budget. Moreover, it is also planning to rework existing policies for the same, Patel said, without divulging further details on the move.

After implementation of GST, government will audit 5% of registered traders every year. Currently VAT department's audit ratio is 7%.

To formalise division of work between state government and central government, the GST council will meet on November 20 in which finance ministers of all the states will be present.