The government on Thursday notified the form for audit report and reconciliation statement that needs to be filed annually by taxpayers with a turnover of more than Rs 2 crore. Additionally, the government notified October 1 as the implementation date for rolling out provisions of tax collected at source (TCS) and tax deducted at source (TDS). While TDS is applicable for notified entities that supply goods and services worth over Rs 2.5 lakh, TCS is to be collected by e-commerce firms before making payments to sellers active on their portal.

The rate for both is 1%. Due to increased compliance burden, the GST Council had kept provisions of TCS/TDS, considered to be important anti-evasion tools, suspended since the new tax regime was rolled out in July last year. Also, another provision of reverse charge mechanism, under which the liability to deposit tax falls on the registered taxpayers procuring supplies from unregistered dealer, has also been kept in abeyance since July 2017. Shubham Mittal, DGM, Taxmann, said taxpayers who are required are eligible to be audited by a chartered account would electronically furnish the annual return in GSTR-9, reconciliation statement in GSTR-9C and copy of audited annual accounts.

The GST portal has not yet rolled out the functionality to furnish these two forms. “The e-commerce companies for TCS and various PSUs/government companies for TDS would need to quickly gear up their ERP systems to comply with these provisions from October 1. With audit report as well being notified, the industry would now really need to buckle up, especially given the short timeframe,” Abhishek Jain, tax partner at EY, said.

 

Source : Financial Express