Written by : S.PRAKASH, Advocate and Income Tax consultant
When GST was introduced at mid night, the trade and industry, small, micro big, multinational and national industry circle were very happy as it was announced that the GST is a ONE NATION ONE TAX, and a revolution in the indirect tax system of the INDIA, which is a federal states and the constitutional amendment was supported by most of the political parties forgetting the political differences among them.
Is it really happened a big question mark. Most of the provisions in the GST Act were not supporting the trouble free tax system, the provisions were not clear, not practical, against the natural justice, the language of the Act had lot of ambiguity, and so on. Even ti;ll date the ONE NATION ONE TAX has not been achieved, as we are practically seeing that most of the cases of allowing the input tax credit, o1001, vies has been taken by different State GST authorities and the same in case of the Central GST authorities.
The High Court orders of one state is not accepted in the others State GST authorities and even the High Court Order of another State is rejected in another State in allowing the GST input tax credit. This has created a lot of litigations in the courts wasting the time of the court and the additional cost to the taxpayers, as the department or the taxpayers are approaching the High Court as a last resort in view of the non-formation of the TRIBUNALS, and the First appeal (the department) is of no use and in all most all cases the department officials will support the tax collection irrespective of the fact whether it is worn or correct collection.In case if the Assesse or the Tax Professional questioned for the questioning the State/Central GST authorities the department will take a biased opinion and the biased orders will be passed against such tax payers and tax professional’s cases.
I hope you all remember what happened in Tamil Nadu, the person who explain the difficulty in interpretation of the GST law as made to ask apology,. When we see all these types of actions and reactions, don’t you feel that the TAX TERARRISAM IS slowly happening in the Indian Tax System?
No business, trade and industry bodies are not against the strict implementation of the TAX Laws, either Indirect/Direct, but in name of strict the tax payers should not be harassed and the officers are requested to interpret in provisions of the Tax Laws in the best interest of the tax payers without compromising the interest of the NATION and their own interest.
