GST Facilitation Cell (Details)-Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion

A GST facilitation cell has been set up in the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion to answer queries regarding GST. The GST facilitation cell is headed by Shri Sudhansu Sekhar Das, Economic Adviser (ss.das@nic.in, Tel:23063932) and consists of the following:

1. Shri Piyush Mishra

2. Ms. Astha Funda

3. Ms.Akshita Bhatia

4. Ms. Nitu Jaiswal

They can be contacted over phone: 011-23062379, 23062665; gstcell-dipp@gov.in, #mociseva.

The cell will function on all working days between 9.00 A.M.to 5.30 P.M.

CBDT Notifies Rule 10CB for Secondary Adjustments under Section 92CE of Income Tax Act, 1961.

Rule 10CB for operationalising the provisions of secondary adjustment has been notified by the Central Board of Direct Taxes on 15th June, 2017. It prescribes the time limit for repatriation of excess money and the rate of interest to be applied for computing the income in case of failure to repatriate the excess money within the prescribed time limit. Separate rates of interest have been provided for international transactions denominated in Indian currency and in foreign currency. The rates of interest are applicable on an annual basis.

The time limit of 90 days for repatriation of excess money shall begin only when the primary adjustments exceeding Rupees One Crore made in respect of Assessment Year 2017-18 or later, attains finality. Where the transfer pricing order is appealed against by the taxpayer, the time limit for repatriation shall commence only after the appeal is finalised by the appellate authority.

The rule is available on the website of the Income-tax Department (www.incometaxindia.gov.in)

The Finance Act, 2017 inserted section 92CE in the Income-tax Act, 1961 with effect from 1st April, 2018 to provide for secondary adjustment by attributing income to the excess money lying in the hands of the associated enterprise, in order to make the actual allocation of funds consistent with that of the primary transfer pricing adjustment. The provision shall apply to primary adjustments exceeding Rupees One Crore made in respect of Assessment Year 2017-18 onwards.

Relaxation in return filing procedure for first two months of GST implementation

With the objective of ensuring smooth rollout of GST and taking into account the concerns expressed by the trade and industry regarding filing of the returns in GST regime, it has been decided that, for the first two months of GST implementation, the tax would be payable based on a simple return (Form GSTR-3B) containing summary of outward and inward supplies which will be submitted before 20th of the succeeding month. However, the invoice-wise details in regular GSTR – 1 would have to be filed for the month of July and August, 2017 as per the timelines given below –

* Facility for uploading of outward supplies for July, 2017 will be available from 15th July, 2017.

No late fees and penalty would be levied for the interim period. This is intended to provide a sense of comfort to the taxpayers and give them an elbow room to attune themselves with the requirements of the changed system. This not only underlines the government’s commitment towards ensuring that all the stakeholders are on board but also provides an opportunity to the taxpayers to be ready for this historic reform.

CCI issues order against Hyundai Motor India Limited (HMIL) for anti-competitive conduct, imposes penalty of Rs. 87 crore for the anti-competitive conduct.

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has found Hyundai Motor India Limited (HMIL) to be in contravention of the provisions of Section 3(4)(e) read with Section 3(1) of the Competition Act, 2002 for imposing arrangements upon its dealers which resulted into Resale Price Maintenance in sale of passenger cars manufactured by it. Such arrangements also included monitoring of the maximum permissible discount levels through a Discount Control Mechanism. Further, HMIL was found to have contravened the provisions of Section 3(4)(a) read with Section 3(1) of the Act for mandating its dealers to use recommended lubricants/ oils and penalising them for use of non-recommended lubricants and oils.

The final order has been passed today on informations filed by the dealers of HMIL viz. Fx Enterprise Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. and St. Antony’s Cars Pvt. Ltd.

Apart from issuing a cease and desist order against HMIL, CCI has imposed a penalty of Rs. 87 crore upon HMIL for the anti-competitive conduct. The penalty has been levied @ 0.3% of the average relevant turnover of HMIL of preceding three years. CCI noted in its order that for the purposes of determining the relevant turnover for the impugned infringement, revenue from sale of motor vehicles alone have been taken into account.

A copy of the CCI’s order passed in Case Nos. 36 & 82 of 2014 has been uploaded on the website of CCI at www.cci.gov.in.

DGFT creates GST Facilitation Cell for exporters

DGFT has constituted a GST facilitation cell in DGFT Headquarters to assist and advice exporters , trade and industry for smooth transition from present regime to GST regime w.e.f. 1st July 2017.The GST facilitation cell is headed by Mr Nikunj Kumar Srivastava, Add DGFT and comprises two other officers Mr Rakesh Kumar Joint DGFT(r.kumar73@nic.in), Mr Kaushlendra Pratap Singh Deputy DGFT(Kaushlendrap.singh@nic.in. Exporters can email their queries concerning GST and pertaining to FTP. 

Similarly all regional offices of DGFT have constituted GST facilitation cell and the cell would headed by head of the regional office i.e. Add DGFT/ Joint DGFT with other two officers of the rank of Deputy DGFTor Asst DGFT. 

Recently, DG, DGFT also convened a meeting of stakeholders (FIEO/ trade/ industry) on 9 th June to understand the issues being faced by them in GST system. These issues have been taken up with department of revenue and GSTN, who have informed that most of the issues have already been resolved. 

Earlier, DGFT, jointly with FIEO, had also organised an outreach program on 2nd June, 2017 to educate the exporters about GST regime. This program was attended by large number of exporters. Shri Ajay Bhalla, Director General DGFT himself addressed the exporters and explained them about all aspects of GST including benefits that will accrue to them because of automatic and quick refund of all taxes paid on inputs. DG also responded to many queries of the exporters regarding various export promotion schemes, filing of GST returns and claiming refund. Shri Tejpal singh, Addl DG, DGEP and Shri Yoginder Garg commissioner customs were also present in the workshop, who made detailed presentation on GST. 

It may be noted that earlier Department of Commerce had announced to align the mid-term review of Foreign Trade Policy with roll out of GST for the convenience of exporters and industry.

GSTN holds a Review Meeting with GST Suvidha Providers (GSPs) to Assess Readiness for GST roll-out from 01st July, 2017

GSTN called a meeting with all the GST Suvidha Providers (GSPs) at their office at Aero City in national capital yesterday. There are 34 GSPs that have been selected by GSTN to provide additional channel of filing returns and other compliances related to GST. GSPs are expected to help large businesses with complex and varied internal processes to comply with the GST regime that becomes effective from 01st July 2017. The meeting was chaired by the Chairman, GSTN who heard and assessed the preparations of the GSPs. The meeting was also attended among others by Shri Arun Goyal, Additional Secretary, GST Security Council, who interacted with the GSPs. 

Of the 34 GSPs, representatives of 30 of the GSPs were present physically and 2 attended via conference call. GSTN presented the timelines of the release of updated specifications of APIs for the new GSTR forms that are to be applicable from the 01st of July. The API specifications will be released in staggered manner for all the GSPs and their partner ASPs so that they can study and analyse the same for making changes in their software developed on old design of returns. Subsequent to publishing of the specifications, GSTN will also make available live APIs on the sandbox for testing of the codes that the GSPs will modify/develop. The dates for the release of the specifications and the Live APIs for various returns for testing/integration were communicated to all the GSPs. The specifications of GSR-1 return (for uploading the supply data) was released yesterday and the live API will be made available on 29th June. The dates of release of specification and live APIs for the remaining GST return forms were also discussed and communicated. Staggered delivery of specifications and live APIs was agreed by all to manage the changes made in the rules and forms recently. 

GSTN also published and explained the method and manner in which the GSPs would be able to integrate with the GST System to be able to submit all the return forms on behalf of their clients and tax payers. The requirement of GSPs being secure and in turn ensuring security of the GST system was also highlighted and emphasised. GSPs were told that they must have their systems audited as per the prevailing ISO standard on security from one of the auditors on the panel of CERT-IN before they connect with and start pushing data into the GST System. 

GSTN advised all GSPs to continue to visit the GSP ecosystem webpage on the GSTN website (www.gstn.org/ecosystem) for all information, updates and guidelines, which are regularly updated. 

Do Taxpayers mandatorily need services of GSP or ASP under GST? 

For the convenience of taxpayers, GSTN has come-up with an Offline Tool where data on invoices (business to business), exports, supplies to consumers etc., which are required to create GSTR-1 (Outward Supply Return), can be entered in an excel sheet in offline mode (without being connected to Internet). At desired interval, the tool can be run to upload all such data on the portal. Only while uploading the data on GST portal, Internet connectivity will be required. The Offline tool will be provided free of cost and taxpayers will be able to download it from the GST portal (www.gst.gov.in) from last week of June. GSTN will release the format of Excel in which businesses will start maintaining the data from 1st of July for using the free offline tool for uploading the invoice data and other return data. 

Taxpayers using offline tool will not require services of any GSP. Similarly those having small number of business to business invoices, like retailers and small traders, can do the data entry on portal itself and they will also not require the services of GSPs.

GST Council constitutes 18 Sectoral Groups for smooth roll-out of GST

As decided in the 14th Meeting of the GST Council held on 18th-19th May, 2017 in Srinagar, J&K, 18 Sectoral Groups have been constituted representing various sectors of the economy in order to ensure smooth roll-out of GST. These 18 Sectoral Groups representing various sectors of the economy and containing Senior Officers of the Centre and the States are being set-up to ensure smooth implementation of GST by timely responding to the issues and problems of their respective Sector(s).

In fact, they are being with the following objectives:

• Interact and examine representations received from trade and industry associations/bodies of their respective sector.
• Highlight specific issues for the smooth transition of the respective sector to the GST regime.
• Prepare sector specific draft guidance.

These Sectoral Working Groups consist of Senior Officers from the Centre and the States.

18 Sectoral Groups along with the names of Co-convenor(s) are as follows:

S. No.	Sector	Central Government	State Government
		Name & Designation	Name & Designation
1	Banking, Financial & Insurance	Upender Gupta, Commissioner, GST Policy Wingh, CBEC	Dhananjay Akhade, Jt. Commissioner, Maharashtra
2	Telecom	Amitabh Kumar, Jt. Secretary (TRU-II), CBEC	Sh. Mukesh Kumar Meshram, CCT, Uttar Pradesh
3	Exports (incl EOUs and SEZs)	Dr. Tejpal Singh, ADG, DGEP, CBEC	Amitabh Jain, Principal Secretary, Chhattisgarh
4.	IT & ITes	M. Vinod Kumar, Chief Commissioner, CBEC	Ms. Smaraki Mahapatra, CCT, West Bengal
5	Transport & Logistics	J.M. Kennedy, ADG, DRI, CBEC	Ms. Sujatha Chaturvedi, Pr. Secretary, Bihar
6	Textiles	Yogendra Garg, Commissioner, CBEC	Ms. Mona Khandhar, Secretary (EA), Gujarat
7	MSMEs (incl. job work)	Manish Sinha, Commissioner, CBEC & GST Council	H. Rajesh Prasad, Commissioner, VAT, Delhi
8	Oil & Gas (upstream & downstream)	P.K. Jain, Chief Commissioner, (AR), CBEC	Anurag Goel, CCT, Assam
9	Gems & Jewellery	Reyaz Ahmad, Director (TRU)	Dr. P.D. Vaghela, CCT, Gujarat
10	Services received and provided by Government	D.P. Nagendra Kumar, Pr. Commissioner, CBEC	Arun Mishra, Additional Secretary (CT) Bihar
11	Food Processing	Ajay Jain, Chief Commissioner, CBEC	Khalid Anwar, Sr. Jt. CCT, West Bengal
12	E-commerce	R. Sriram, Commissioner, CBEC	Ritvik Pandey, CCT, Karnataka
13	Big Infra (Airport & Sea ports including Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul, Power Sector, Housing and Construction)	Sandeep Prakash, Commissioner, CBEC	J. Syamala Rao, CCT, Andhra Pradesh
14	Travel & Tourism	Smt. Sungita Sharma, Pr. Commissioner, CBEC	Raghwendra Kumar Singh, CCT, Madhya Pradesh (Indore)
15	Handicrafts	Pradeep Goel, Commissioner, CBEC	Ms. Sangeetha P. CCT, Chhattisgarh
16	Media & Entertainment	M. Srinivas, Commissioner, CBEC	Omnarayan Chainsukhji Bhangdiya, Addl. Commissioner, Sales Tax, Maharashtra, Pune
17	Drugs & Pharmaceuticals	A.R.S. Kumar, Commissioner, CBEC	Dr. M.P. Ravi Prasad, Joint CCT, Karnataka
18	Mining	S.N. Singh, Chief, Commissioner, CBEC	Praveen Gupta, Secretary (Finance), Rajasthan

The officials of these Sectoral Groups will deal with the issues and the problems of the respective sector(s) they represent. Concerned industry Groups/Associations or even individual industry representative(s) may approach the respective Sectoral Group officers with their problems, if any, relating to GST implementation who, in turn, will try to guide and help them in resolving the same. This exercise will help in dealing with most of the sectoral problems and issues at the local/regional level.