In the recent interview of Mr. Navin Kumar, Chairman of GSTN with the Business Line, he said that the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) will start migrating over 80 lakh taxpayers onto its system from the next month for the smooth implementation of GST regime. Existing taxpayers of Central Excise, Value added tax and Service Tax will be migrated to GSTN.

The GSTN will begin issuing GST identity numbers (GSTIN) and generating passwords for these taxpayers. They can log on to the system, familiarize themselves with it as well as provide us the relevant information. The GSTN, which will provide the IT infrastructure for the new indirect tax levy, has already received a list of all the taxpayers, their Permanent Account Numbers (PAN), names of the business entities, and their constitution or form from the tax authorities.

On receiving their ID and passwords, taxpayers will be expected to log on to the GSTN and provide three additional inputs – place and address of business, name (s) of directors or proprietors, and details of bank accounts which will become part of the GST records.

Though as per the Section 142 of the Draft Model GST Law the taxpayers will have time up to six months after the roll out of GST to provide this information, but to get familiarize with the new indirect taxation in India- “GST”; GSTN has planned to start migration of existing taxpayers to GSTN from next month itself.

The Report of Business Process for Registration in GST mentions the process for the migration of existing service taxpayers to GST, the Service Tax authority will ask the existing taxpayers to intimate the States where they want to get registered in as option of Centralized registration in Service tax will be shifted towards the mandatory state wise registration in the GST regime. Hence some questions may arise that whether information need to provide for:

• By place and address of business, it means the place and address of the every state where the taxpayer wants to get registered ?

• By name of Directors/ proprietors, they means the name of directors/ proprietors of every state where the taxpayer wants to get registered ?

• By Bank accounts details, they means the bank accounts of every state where the taxpayer wants to get registered in GST?

These queries needs more clarification to meet the roll-out target of the new indirect tax levy “Goods and Services Tax” from April 1, 2017 in an optimum manner.