The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) is planning to use the data of electric meters and property tax to increase the base of goods and services tax (GST), according to news agency ANI. This could be done by filtering the database slowly in an intelligent way, Vivek Johri, Chairman at CBIC was quoted as saying in the report. The move is intended at tricking tax evaders who illegally avoid paying their tax liabilities

The concerns

When GST was implemented, there was a GST tax base of Rs 45-50 lakh, which has now increased to Rs 1.4 crore. However, when we look at other tax bases, the number of GST taxpayers is very less, Johri said.

He added that there is a good scope for increasing the tax base.

The way out

CBIC will take help from power distribution companies for the same. It will further take data of electric meters and will also use the property tax data to increase the tax base of GST.

The CBIC Chairman said the board's strategy regarding GST is that collecting revenue is its target, along with that it is also necessary to increase the tax base. On top of that, government's proposal of making Permanent Account Number (PAN) as a common business identifier will also help here.

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In Budget 2023, the Finance Minister announced that PAN will be considered as a common business identifier for all digital systems of all specified departments of the government.

"This will help us. We will take the help of distribution data of power distribution companies. We will also use the property tax data," Johri was quoted as saying in the report.

Put simply- in case of property tax, the PAN database will show which commercial properties is already registered in income tax and from their database CBIC will be able to know what kind of business he/she is doing

"This will help us in knowing who are the potential future taxpayers which are not yet in our GST tax base," Johri said.

"Apart from that, we would like to explain our potential taxpayers about the benefits which they will get by joining GST. For example, there is a huge benefit of an input tax credit. There is a huge benefit of expanding their market," he was further quoted as saying in the report.

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(Edited by : Anshul)

First Published:Feb 14, 2023 5:20 PM IST