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CBIC to assign risk rating to GST registration
applications, taxmen to cross-verify documents
In order to check fake GST registration, CBIC will
assign a risk rating to all applications and tax
officers will cross-verify the documents submitted by
the applicants with municipal records. The Central Board
of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) on Wednesday issued
instructions to field offices after it came to light
during the ongoing two-month special drive that
fraudsters have misused PAN and Aadhaar numbers of
people to obtain GST registrations.
In the ongoing all-India
drive, Centre and State GST officers have detected over
15,000 fake registrations and are initiating punitive
action against the perpetrators. They are also trying to
find out the mastermind who are the real beneficiaries.
As per the instructions, the Directorate General of
Analytics and Risk Management (DGARM) and GST Network
would give a risk rating — High, Medium and Low — to
each application for registration, based on data
analytics and risk parameters. This will facilitate a
“targeted approach in verification and processing of
registration applications”, the CBIC said, adding
special attention needs to be paid to the cases where a
‘high’ risk rating has been assigned.
As regards the verification, tax officers will have to
“carefully scrutinise” the documents submitted by
applicants and “correlate and cross-verify” the same
with the uploaded documents to check the authenticity of
the applicant. The details of the address of the
principal and additional places of business and the
corresponding documents may be “closely scrutinised” to
verify correctness. “To the extent possible, the
authenticity of the documents furnished as proof of
address may be cross-verified from the publicly
available sources, such as websites of the concerned
authorities such as land registry, electricity
distribution companies, municipalities and local bodies,
etc,” the CBIC said.
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The instruction said that verification of applications
for registration by the proper officers is one of the
most crucial steps in the direction of preventing the
menace of fake or bogus registrations. ”While numerous
initiatives have been/are being undertaken on the policy
and systems level, it is pertinent to strengthen the
process of scrutiny and verification of such
applications for registration at the end of tax
officers,” it added. The instruction also asked field
officers to check whether the registrations has been
obtained on the same PAN earlier, either within the same
state or in other states.
In such cases, the status of the said PAN as well as the
compliance record of the said GSTINs may also be checked
from the portal. Where the officer finds the application
to be deficient, further clarification would be sought
from the applicant and if no response is received, such
application would be rejected. Where the applicant has
either failed to undergo authentication of the Aadhaar
number or has not opted for authentication of the
Aadhaar number, the GST officer would initiate the
process for physical verification of the place of
business.AMRG & Associates Senior Partner Rajat Mohan
said these guidelines have laid out additional
responsibility on tax officers to ensure that
unscrupulous elements are not allowed to enter the Goods
and Services Tax (GST) system. ”With these guidelines,
Government would be able to restrict the entry of
fraudsters in the GST supply chain,” Mohan added.
Source::: FINANCIAL EXPRESS ,
dated 14/06/2023.
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