Revenue officials to urge commerce students to become GST officials for MSMEs

Kolkata: Revenue officials will soon visit colleges and universities in Kolkata to persuade students, especially those pursuing the commerce stream, to help MSMEs in filing their GST returns and earn.

"Not only could this be a source of livelihood for them in the future, numerous MSMEs, which find it difficult to file GST returns, will also benefit in the process," said Devendra Nagvenkar, commissioner of CGST and Central Excise North Commissionerate, at a special session on 'One Year of GST Implementation' organised by CII on Monday.

"We will soon prepare a strategy as to how we will go about it," he said.

Nagvenkar said that the government has now turned its focus on consolidation and ease of compliance. "We have launched a special clearance drive of GST refund of export and they will continue the effort," he said.

According to Nagvenkar, the assessee base has increased post-GST and there has been a 127 percent increase in registered assessee base post-GST in Kolkata Zone.

The number of registered tax assessees has increased to over 6.5 lakh under the new indirect tax regime, from around 2.86 lakh in the pre-GST regime, while total GST collection by the department was Rs 26,550.21 crore during 2017-18, compared to a collection of Rs 24,609.42 crore, comprising central excise

and service tax in the previous year.

"The rate of filing returns in Kolkata Zone is slightly more than the national average of 65 percent and the department is taking various measures to pursue and encourage non-filers to file their returns," he said, adding that Bengal would be the first state to cross the thres-

hold of estimated revenue collection.

He maintained that for easy and successful implementa-tion of the E-Way Bill, 500 officers of this zone have been trained.

Notably, the jurisdiction of Kolkata CGST and Central Excise includes Bengal, Sikkim and Andaman and Nicobar islands.