GST audit notices drive Jalandhar city traders up the wall
Tribune News service
Jalandhar, July 18
City traders have been complaining of receiving audit notices by the GST Department. Not only this, they also have to go to the Hoshiarpur office to complete formalities, even when the GST office is in the city.
“Covid has already proven to be a disaster for us, but the departments do not care and burden us with new challenges,” the traders rued.
Ravinder Dhir from the Traders Forum said the department has been sending notices in the name of the GST audit and on the top of it, traders from the city are going to the GST Audit Wing in Hoshiarpur, which is again nothing short of harassment.
He said there were two problems. Firstly, there are several traders whose VAT assessment cases of three to four years are still pending. Secondly, the audit wing of Jalandhar is operated from Hoshiarpur, even though there is a huge office in the city itself, he said.
Paramjit Singh, Deputy Excise and Taxation Commissioner, said, the audit of 2017-2018 has started and it has to be done because it is the mandate of the GST council.
On the Hoshiarpur issue, he said: “Until now, we have picked up 33 cases. We have three audit wings, of which audit wing number 1 and 3 are here in the city, and 2nd number wing is in Hoshiarpur. So, only 10 cases are being looked after by the Hoshiarpur wing. If anyone faces any issue and will definitely try to resolve the matter.
Notably, after several fights, scores of meetings and plethora of requests, the one-time settlement (OTS) scheme for VAT dues was finally unveiled at the beginning of the year. With this policy, the traders having tax demand up to Rs1 lakh would only have to pay 10 per cent of the tax amount to be paid and thus the policy proved good for them.
Industries Minister Sunder Sham Arora had then termed it a ‘historic step’ to give the much-needed relief to industrialists. He said the scheme would benefit almost 10,000 small and medium scale businessmen of the Doaba region. The traders had said only the cases from 2013-2014 were covered under the scheme, which was not justified, and since then, they had been demanding that the cases till December 31, 2020 should be taken under the scheme.
