60.5 lakh taxpayers enrolled under GST so far: Hasmukh Adhia

As many as 60.5 lakh taxpayers have been enrolled under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the first phase out of a total of 84 lakh taxpayers who will come under the new indirect tax net, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said.

"As on April 30, when Phase-1 of enrolment was closed, 60.5 lakh taxpayers out of 84 lakh had enrolled," Adhia said here on Wednesday after holding detailed review of the IT-preparedness for GST system at the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) office.

The enrolment window will be re-opened for 15 days from June 1 to give another opportunity to taxpayers to enrol, he said.

Expressing satisfaction with the preparation for the roll-out of GST from July 1, Adhia said that out of 62,937 tax officials, nearly 24,668 have been given hands-on training on the application software on live system while the remaining officials will be trained by June 15 this year.

GSTN, which is creating the information technology (IT) backbone for the new indirect tax regime, is also conducting a pilot on GST system software from May 2-16, where 3,200 taxpayers drawn from each state, union territory and Centre will be participating.

"This pilot will also give an opportunity to test all the modules by a large set of users in real life environment so that all possible scenarios get tested. All stakeholders involved in the GST system from taxpayer to bank to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to accounting authorities are participating in this exercise, which is like a rehearsal for the real rollout," the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The feedback from the pilot will be used to further improve the GST Software, it said.

--IANS

mm/vgu/vt