With the help of new measures on the GST and customs, the government hopes for the collection of indirect taxes that are healthy in the next fiscal.
Central Board of Direct Taxes and Customs (CBIC) Chairman Vivek Johri discuss strategies with TOI.
Excerpts: What is the target for achieving growth objectives GST more than 15% during the next fiscal year? We have been working on improving compliance, in addition to other strategies for augmenting income.
We started dealing with the false and the dealer invoice in the middle of 2020.
The administrative and legal changes have borne good results, as seen from the number and percentage of results submitted.
Now, almost 90% of the assessees were filing returns.
We can work out the system of supervision and we will sustain our audit strategy.
This will help increase the productivity of revenue from as we will be able to check what is being proposed.
There are proposals in the Budget to limit the maximum output tax.
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We have done the research and we see some new applicants come.
Many of them have no income tax payers or excise or VAT dealers and those who pay all their tax credits and disappear after a few months.
We have taken the ability to determine that at least 1% of the taxes must be paid in cash.
Other changes are to handle new entrants in the system and initially, we will allow them to use only a certain part of the credit.
It is not as if we will block forever.
What kind of reforms needed in the GST to help generate more revenue and how to simplify dealing with the classification and other issues? The level of rationalization is a big problem, which is a group of ministers (GoM) also works.
If we are able to reduce the number of levels and liberation, many disputes will go.
There is also an awareness that cess compensation position is quite clear and there is a concern because it is missing from June.
There is also GoM look at issues of technology, that can handle several issues of facilitation.
Is the monthly GST collection of Rs 1.
35-1.
4 lakh crore normal? New Rs1.
30-1.
35 lakh crore could be done.
As the economy recovers, some services will be back.
How do you approach your customs duty collection target? We have a lot of clarity about how much we earlier on export promotion schemes.
Streamlining the exception, with 350 to be removed, will assist in measuring foregone revenue, which would help transparency.
The third thing that will help is a duty on the level of end-use software for exceptions going through this, which again will help us see who are the beneficiaries and the extent to which they utilize them.
Fourth, there are provisions that allow the assessment, in which we see, especially for consumer goods, such as toys, furniture, handbags, sportwear, footwear, readymade garments, where imports that occurred in the values ​​very low.
Most of the time, because we go with the value of the transaction, we can not cope effectively.
Now, after extensive consultation with industry and collecting data, we will identify a particular item, which will be subject to additional control from the standpoint of assessment.
Say, furniture items and after consulting is put under surveillance.
Based on the consultation, we may prescribe declare the expected value based on the composition, design, etc.
If a transaction occurs below that price, there will be additional responsibility on importers to give us additional documents and establish the truth value.
Other customs administration has also adopted this.
Are there any other items and how many will be there? Will mostly consumer goods such as food products, ranging from chocolate to the confectionery, fresh agricultural products, such as apples, dried fruits.
Is smuggling gold associated with customs? We analyzed the data for the last 10-15 years, we did not find a correlation between the two.
When you come from the Gulf countries, the green channel is dead and each bag is scanned.
How do you overcome it because of this bad optics and everyone is a suspect? There may be times when we do 100% check flight.
We have a passenger profiling system, which looks at a lot of data such as trip history, business, whether it has been caught in the past.
While we were able to scan the unaccompanied baggage, baggage accompanied only be scanned after it exits from duty free.
It was not our intention to scan everyone.
We are moving towards a sharper targeting.