Industry body, Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) has urged Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to postpone the implementation Goods and Services Tax (GST) proposed from July 1 and stated that it will be difficult for the taxpayers to comply with the requirements of the new unified indirect tax regime as the IT network is not yet ready for it.
The industry chamber has stated that significant amount of work has been done on the GST front, but there are various issues that need to be looked at before it can be implemented successfully. It pointed out that taxpayers have not yet migrated to the GSTN portal due to reasons such as non-familiarity with IT tools along with registration process. It also noted that during the current phase of GST migration for existing assessees, the server was constantly under maintenance.
Adding further, Assocham has said that this raises the huge question as to whether the IT infrastructure has been appropriately tested. It also raises questions as to whether this system can survive in the GST era when it had undergone maintenance during the second phase of migration when the traffic was restricted only to migration. It noted that at present there are about 80 lakh excise, service tax and VAT assessees, of which 64.35 lakh have already migrated to the portal of GST Network.