The GST Council is verifying the 66.79 lakh new registrations by taxpayers, which could be fake or pertain to shell companies, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi, who is also the convenor of Group of Ministers (GoM) on integrated GST, said on Monday.

"The new taxpayers, who are 66.7 lakh in number, hardly pay 15% of tax. So, whatever taxes we are getting from them is only 15% of taxes, which is about Rs 10,000 crore. Hence, we are strictly monintoring the new taxpayers to ensure they are not fake," he told reporters after the his meeting with the GoM.

Modi said the number of active taxpayers has gone up to 1.21 crore since the launch of the goods and services tax (GST), of which 66.79 lakh are new registrations.

According to him, many states have started physically verifying these companies by visiting the premises, geo- tagging the location and uploading the photographs on the system from mobile phones.

The GST Council has also introduced 3B, a simple return, which has to be filed every month, said the Bihar deputy chief minister.

"We have decided in one of our GST council meetings that if the firms don't file 3B returns for two consecutive months, their e-way bill will be blocked," said Modi.

He said that till date, about 3.47 lakh dealers' e- way bill has been blocked by the system and as soon as the 3B return is filed, the system would automatically open and the e-bill is generated.

Another decision taken in the meeting was the late fee of Rs 100 per day under the GSTR-1 or the outward supply has been waived, he said.

"It is a one-time opportunity for those have not filed their GST return-1. We have waived the late fee of Rs 100 per day. Those who don't file the GSTR-1 for two consecutive terms, their e-way bill will also be blocked," he said.

Conceding that there was huge backlog of refund of GST pending with the authorities, Modi said Rs 25,170 crore worth online refund was pending pertaining to 77,038 applications.

Of these, Rs 2,503 crore pertaining 5,912 applications were disbursed, and online refund has picked up speed, he said.

Explaining the reason behind poor disbursement of refund, Modi said many states were not acknowledging the online applications.

"States are delaying in acknowledging those online applications. And if sometimes they acknowledge, they have to issue deficiency memo which are not being issued. We have gone into the details, and asked the states to expedite all these refunds. Now, the system has become very simple," he said.

The Bihar deputy chief minister said a new return system would be launched from Apri 1, 2020, which would have a few fields.

"The new return system is very simple with very few fields. It will be user-friendly," Modi said.

To a question on GST collection plummeting, Modi said there was a cyclic slowdown in the economy, which would soon be back on track.

He rejected the charge that states were not paid their share of GST saying that all the dues are getting cleared. #casansaar (Source - PTI, Economic Times)