Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Neerav Kumar Mallick, commissioner (Audit) CGST Indore commissionerate, said with the rolling out of GST regime, the time has come when the taxpayer has to change his mindset of evading taxes, as the penalty for tax evasion and interest thereon are very high. Due to the online system, data intelligence etc., the entire trail remains with the department, which makes it very easy to catch GST evasion.
Mallick was addressing as the chief guest in a capacity building programme on GST held CA auditorium. It was jointly organised by CGST Audit Department and GST & Indirect Tax Committee of ICAI.
Mallick said the intention of the department has never been to harass the taxpayers who are paying the due taxes on time. They need not panic.
He said that in the coming times, the role of GST audit is going to be much bigger than the action of raids and investigations, and the kind of tax recovery that is coming out of the audit at present is commendable. Audit has never been a means of collection of taxes, its purpose is to ensure compliance with all the provisions and find out the mistakes. In many cases the taxpayer was paying less tax by mistake but it came into notice at the time of audit.
Kirti Joshi, a Central Council Member of ICAI, informed that now the notices of GST audit have started coming very fast and GST audit tries to ascertain whether the calculation of turnover, input tax credit and tax payable by the trader is correct or not. GST audit increases voluntary compliance among taxpayers.
Anand Jain, chairman of CA Indore Branch, said that the GST law has seen many changes in five years and due to workload, sometimes important changes are not taken into account and sometimes law is interpreted different. This kind of programme gives an opportunity to know the side of both the department and the taxpayer.
On this occasion additional commissioners MP Meena and Virendra Jain, deputy director Sunil Sahu, Atishay Khasgiwala, Amitesh Jain, Mausam Rathi, Swarnim Gupta etc. were present.