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WTC Goa organizes Workshop on GST

Oct 06, 2017

The Goods and Services Tax , a simplified taxation regime was recently introduced in India, which seeks to avoid the incidence of double taxation that was earlier evident in the earlier regime of corporate taxation that encompassed the archaic VAT, Customs and Central Excise in its ambit.
However, since its implementation in July this year, MSMEs and the General consumers are still not familiar with the new rules and regulations of the innovative new tax regime. In this connection, World Trade Centre Goa in association with World Trade Centre Mumbai along with Customs and Central Excise Department organized a ā€œGST Awareness Workshop for MSMEs and Consumersā€ on 6th October, 2017, at Margao, Goa
The key speakers at the workshop were Mr. Gaurav Kumar Jain, I.R.S. Assistant Commissioner, GST, and Dr. Raghavendra Raikar, I.R.S. Assistant Commissioner GST. The workshop was well attended and a host of questions were raised and were promptly deliberated on and suitable suggestions to the queries raised were put forth by the speakers.

Questions relating to filing of GSTR-3, provision for revising GSTR-1, adding invoices related issues on the system, were specially taken up. Notable suggestions that came forth were that the MSMEs are finding it very difficult to pay the advance tax upfront, especially if their line of business was seasonal. Similarly, MSME's have suggested that the requirement of monthly filing of returns is causing them undue hardships as they are spending more time in Tax Compliance matters rather than in marketing and sales of their production, hence, they made an appeal to the officials concerned to at least make the filing of returns a half yearly affair against the monthly affair as of now. The MSME Delegates present also suggested that the limit of Rs 75 lakhs per year, under the Composition scheme, may suitably be increased, to enable more of the Small units to get out of the Gambit of the tedious process of mandatory getting registered under the GST regime.

The officials informed the delegates that many of their problems and suggestions were in nature of structural kind and hence they will suitably make suggestions to the GST Council based on the feedback they received at this workshop.
Earlier Mr Cyril Desouza, Asst. Director - Trade Promotion, WTC Goa, gave the welcome address and later in the day he also proposed the Vote of Thanks.

Seen in the Picture (L-R) Mr Cyril Desouza, Assistant. Director - Trade Promotion, WTC, Goa, Mr Gaurav Kumar Jain, IRS, Assistant. Commissioner, GST, Central Board of Excise and Customs, Ministry of Finance, Government of India and Dr Raghvendra P Raikar, IRS, Assistant Commissioner, GST, Central Board of Excise and Customs, Ministry of Finance, Government of India.