NEW DELHI : Federal indirect tax body the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council meeting on Saturday will consider relaxing the norms for appointing members to the planned 31 GST appellate tribunals so that these dispute redressal forums can start their work quickly, said a person informed about the development.
NEW DELHI : Federal indirect tax body the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council meeting on Saturday will consider relaxing the norms for appointing members to the planned 31 GST appellate tribunals so that these dispute redressal forums can start their work quickly, said a person informed about the development.
The tribunals need to be quickly put in motion to sort out growing tax disputes as the new indirect tax regime is now into its seventh year and GST audits have picked up pace recently.
"The proposals are for relaxation in the criteria for appointing members with the idea of filling the vacancies quickly," said the person quoted above. As per the CGST Act, high court judges, district judges qualified to be a high court judge or a member of the Indian Legal Service having served as an additional secretary can be a judicial member.
The law also prescribes that Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officials in the indirect tax stream and state officials in the field of tax and finance can be appointed as technical members in the appellate tribunal.
Broadening the pool of candidates to include certain classes of experienced professionals such as chartered accountants will help in early operationalisation of the tribunals, said the person cited above, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Analysts believe that these tribunals would start functioning in about three-four months.
An email sent to the spokesperson for finance ministry and to the GST Council secretariate on Thursday seeking comments for the story remained unanswered at the time of publishing.
The Council is also expected to discuss the implementation of 28% tax on online gaming, casinos and race courses, which kicked in from 1 October. The sector has witnessed intense litigation.
As per the order setting up the tribunals last month, some of the states have more than one bench.
Uttar Pradesh has three, Karnataka and Rajasthan have two each, while North Eastern states as a whole have one.
Meanwhile, the Council is also expected to offer tax relief on composite millet-based product mixes. Millets are already tax exempt and the relief is for predominantly millet-based preparations, the person said.
The proposal came from the Karnataka government.
The Centre is trying to step up production, efficient processing and use of millets to boost the millet economy and farmers' income. Year 2023 is being observed as the international year of millets.