The government is planning to further empower the body responsible for detecting tax evasion, before the roll out of much awaited goods and services tax (GST) from July 1, 2017. Along with this, two new agencies will also be formed, in which one will be for business intelligence and analytics. The GST will include central levies like excise duty, service tax and state VAT. For this, the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has changed its existing central excise and service tax field formations to suit the requirements of the new regime. The CBEC will be renamed as the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) and will supervise GST and Customs activities and provide the government policy inputs.
The CBIC will be headed by a chairman and will have six members -- for GST; IT, legal and compliance verification; investigation; tax policy; Customs and administration and vigilance. The CBEC’s human resource arm has stated that the name of the present Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence (DGCEI) will be changed to Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGSTI) with more powers.
The DGSTI will have its task cut out, keeping in view the steep increase in the GST taxpayer base. The organisation will be headed by a principal director general in Delhi who will be assisted by four sub-national directors general. Also, two new directorates are being created. The Directorate General of Analytics and Risk Management (DGARM) will have two verticals for business intelligence and analytics and risk management centre to provide perspectives for policy formulation. The Directorate of International Customs will be created to deal with WTO related matters, including tariff, as well as the Kyoto Convention, multilateral and bi-lateral agreements with other countries.
Further, the National Academy of Customs, Indirect Taxes and Narcotics (NACIN), will be the new form of the existing National Academy of Customs, Excise and Narcotics (NACEN). In the GST regime, it will be the only academy of its kind in India that will provide regular training to officers. It is also envisaged that the NACIN will provide training to representatives of trade bodies and tax professionals. Thus, it will be catering to the training needs of around 70,000 persons every year.
