Little over a month before Gujarat goes to polls, tax professionals across the state are up in arms against the government over the problems faced by them in filing goods and services tax (GST) returns. As part of their protests, chartered accounts, advocates, tax practitioners and traders on Friday thronged GST helpdesks (suvidha kendras) in 25 cities and asked the authorities to file GST returns on their behalf.

"None of the officials were able to successfully submit even a single return, despite trying for a couple of hours.We have been facing various issues right from generation of arbitrary errors to penalties, among others," said Varis Isani, president, Gujarat Sales Tax Bar Association (GSTBA). Ahmedabad, Jamnagar, Rajkot, Surat, Bhavnagar and Junagadh were among cities where protests were held.

Commercial tax department officials said they are making their best attempts to resolve the issues related to filing of GST returns.

However, they denied claims of tax professionals who alleged that none of the GST returns could be uploaded successfully. Friday's protest was part of many programmes chalked out by tax professionals with the support of trading and business community to voice their concerns over the problems faced by them in filing GST returns. Teething problems in uploading GST seem to be snowballing into a political issue ahead of crucial polls in the state. #casansaar (Source - Times of India)