GST Council decisions on Dual Control - A Critical Study

The writer seems to be biased towards the CBEC being its former chairman. State VAT officials are no less then the CBEC officers in managing the state vat revenue. Their assessment and preventive wings are more effective then the CBEC. There is nothing like an expertise of CBEC over service tax matters or cenvat matters which can be judged from the number of cases booked by CBEC officers and number of cases they have won. State VAT officers are also charging WCT on works contracts where service tax is charged. VAT is also charged in many transactions where services are also provided. However since GST is a tax based mainly on value addition no expertise is required to assess most of the transactions. If there is value additional then GST shall be levied be it goods or service. So far, the main point of confrontation in VAT and service tax was of whether the transaction is in goods or services. But in GST there is no confusion, it will be either goods or services, therefore, the main point of dispute is no more in picture. Further when most of the transactions are captured by the GSTN and almost 100% scrutiny shall be done by the system at the time of making payments or filing returns itself, then the scope for any manual scrutiny or intervention does not exist or to a very minimum. There may be IGST related issue, but to a very low extent, because of complete scrutiny of returns at the stage of filing itself. The need of hour is to make GSTN fool-proof with speedy and accurate processing of data. If that is done, there will be very little manual intervention and even the present workforce of CBEC or State VAT departments will become surplus.

CHANDRA SHEKHAR 05/02/2017