What GSTIN means, how to register for GSTIN, what is ARN number, code in GST India 2017

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GST will have an immediate effect on a few things, especially regarding businesses. One of such things is the tax identification number, which is now known as GSTIN. Find out what exactly is GSTIN and how to register.

GST or Goods and Services Tax is currently the poster boy for the Indian Economy. While experts, as well as regular citizens, are divided on how GST is going to transform India, the real effects can only be seen after some time. Meanwhile, there are a few things which will have an immediate effect, especially to the businesses. One of these things is the tax identification number, which is now known as GSTIN (Goods and Services Tax Identification Number). GST is basically a 15-digit number which has replaced the Tax Identification Number (TIN) that business entities were allotted while registering under a state’s Value Added Tax law. Such businesses also had to get several other identification numbers from various places. But now, after the GST implementation, all such numbers will be replaced by GSTIN. Also, while registering on the GST portal you get an ARN (Application Reference Number), which is required for further queries regarding your application, including GSTIN number validation.

In order to get the number, there is a two-step process which is needed to be completed by each business. On its part, the government has kept the process of online registration for GST quite simple. The registration for taxpayers and GST practitioners is now open on the GST portal gst.gov.in and one really does not need to do much provided you have the necessary documents ready for the process. GST registration is critical because it will enable you to avail various benefits that are available under the GST regime. According to government data, of the 83.50 lakh excise, service tax and VAT assesses; 65.6 lakh have already registered on the GSTN portal. Of this 65.6 lakh, nearly 13 lakh business entities are yet to complete the second stage of the registration process. Know all about the whole process below.

What is GSTIN? Under the GST regime, all these different identification numbers required for indirect tax purposes will be replaced by a single umbrella number, the GSTIN. All the taxpayers have been consolidated into a single platform for compliance and administration purposes and have been assigned registration under a single authority. The government has set up GSTN – a special purpose vehicle to provide the IT infrastructure necessary to support GST digitally. All of these businesses will be assigned a unique Goods and Services Tax Identification Number (GSTIN). This 15-digit number is similar to the Tax Identification Number (TIN) that is allotted to business entities registered under a state’s Value Added Tax law. Currently, businesses providing services are also required to obtain a Service Tax Registration Number assigned by the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC).

How does GSTIN get allotted? There is a two-stage verification process:
Stage 1: Upon registration on the GST Network portal, a business is given a provisional GSTIN.
Stage 2: In the second stage, the business entity has to log on to the GSTN portal and provide details of its business, such as the main place of business, additional place of business, directors and bank account details.

Notably, the government has allowed traders and businesses to continue their businesses even after July 1 with provisional IDs, until the time they get their final identification numbers.

What does GSTIN contain? A complete break-up of the proposed GST Identification Number. Each taxpayer is allotted a state-wise PAN-based 15-digit Goods and Services Taxpayer Identification Number (GSTIN).

1. Firt 2 digits of the number represents the state code as per Indian Census 2011.
2. Next 10 digits is the PAN number of the taxpayer.
3. 13th digit gets assigned based on the number of registrations within a state.
4. 14th digit is Z by default.
5. Last digit is the ‘sum’ check code.

ARN: Application Reference Number is the full form of ARN. Basically, ARN Status in GST means, a user can check the status of their GST Registration Application. The ARN will be sent to the Registered User’s Mobile number and Email Address provided. There are five types of possible ‘status’ of your application: ‘Provisional’, ‘Pending for Verification’, ‘Validation against Error’, ‘Migrated’, and ‘Cancelled’.

 

 

Source: http://www.financialexpress.com/economy/gstin-under-gst-india-2017-what-gstin-means-how-to-register-for-gstin-what-is-arn-number-code-in-gst-india-2017/746661/

Bad loans at Indian banks climb to a 15-year high and may increase further Bad loans at Indian banks climb to a 15-year high and may increase further

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Bad debts at Indian lenders, especially state-run banks, have climbed to a 15-year high and may increase further, a central bank study showed.

Bad debts at Indian lenders, especially state-run banks, have climbed to a 15-year high and may increase further, a central bank study showed. Under the baseline scenario in a “macro stress test,” the industry’s gross bad-loan ratio may increase to 10.2 percent by March 2018 after climbing to 9.6 percent in March 2017, the highest since 2002, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s Financial Stability Report released Friday. Stressed assets, including soured debt and restructured loans, eased slightly to 12 percent in March 2017 from 12.3 percent in September 2016.

Weakness in the Indian banking system is a threat to growth in Asia’s third-largest economy and may stall Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to revive credit growth from near a two-decade low. The soured loans have contributed to a $191 billion pile of zombie debt that’s cast the future of some lenders in doubt and curbed investment by businesses. “The RBI and the government are proactively taking steps to resolve NPA challenges in the banking sector,” Deputy Governor NS Vishwanathan said in a foreword to the report. “We have also activated prompt corrective action to stem the slide in the banking system.”

State-run lenders under performed their peers in the private sector, the report showed, which measures risks to the banking system by tracking factors such as profitability, asset quality and liquidity. Last month, the government gave new powers to the RBI in an effort to clean up the country’s bad-debt mess, which has left banks struggling with billions of rupees in nonperforming loans. The government amended the Banking Regulation Act to enable the RBI to order lenders to initiate insolvency proceedings against defaulters and to create committees to advise banks on recovering their loans.

The RBI in June ordered the banks to use the insolvency courts to find a solution for 12 of the debtors, though it didn’t name the institutions on its list. Earlier in the decade, many Indian steel and construction companies borrowed to fund expansion at a time when the economy was expanding at 9 percent to 10 percent a year. Loans turned sour as that growth slowed, weakening demand for steel used in construction projects.

Source: http://www.financialexpress.com/economy/bad-loans-at-indian-banks-climb-to-a-15-year-high-and-may-increase-further/744225/

Historic GST launched at midnight, from today India is finally one nation, one tax

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India embraced the goods and services tax (GST) on the intervening night of Friday-Saturday, in a move that marked the culmination of the country’s long and chequered journey toward a uniform, all-encompassing, pan-India indirect tax system.

India embraced the goods and services tax (GST) on the intervening night of Friday-Saturday, in a move that marked the culmination of the country’s long and chequered journey toward a uniform, all-encompassing, pan-India indirect tax system. The GST would militate against and cut out the cascade of multiple taxes which jack up product prices. The official launch of the tax preceded a grand ceremony in the central hall of Parliament attended by the president and prime minister, along with members of both Houses and the GST Council. Some Opposition parties including the Congress, Trinamool Congress and Left did not attend the ceremony, citing protests against GST by small and medium-scale entrepreneurs, traders, weavers and informal-sector workers.

Although the design of the new destination-based tax on consumption with its multiple rates, sub-optimal coverage and complicated rules is unmistakably inferior to an “ideal GST”, even independent tax experts welcomed the launch, calling it a transformational move. However, trenchant critics would say the imperfect GST has merely enabled cross-utilisation of credit between the central and state VAT chains and is, therefore, akin to the 2004 Cenvat rules that allowed such cross-credit facility between central excise and service tax.

But these critics might have taken too dim a view; GST is a momentous event for thee reasons: One, it puts in place a federal, rules-bound indirect tax system that would curtail the scope of rate differentials for the same products among states (one-product-one-tax) ; two, it could potentially slash India’s high logistics costs by speeding up movement of goods across state borders and even within states and thereby make the country’s goods and services more competitive; and three, thanks to the availability of seamless input tax credits, GST would discourage tax evasion and expand the revenue base for the government without hurting the businesses or the consumers. The GST will subsume excise duty and state VAT (along with the corresponding taxes on imports), service tax, octroi, entry tax, purchase tax, central sales tax, and entertainment tax, but not the basic Customs duty which is the tariff on imports.

Earlier, the GST Council, which met for an hour, decided to reduce the tax rate on fertilisers from 12% proposed earlier to 5%, a move that would nullify the chances of prices of these key farm inputs rising under GST. The gap between the current tax incidence on fertilisers and the 12% rate had created a practical difficulty in recovering the differential from fertiliser stocks lying with manufacturers and dealers as MRPs are printed on them. Also, the ministry of finance tweeted, the rate for “exclusive parts of tractors” have been reduced to 18% from 28%.

NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy on Friday rebutted the claim that GST would produce 1.5% increase in GDP. “For an imperfect GST, I have no idea what is the figure. This particular figure (1.5%) was for ideal GST,” he said. Chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian had told FE earlier that even though “we have not got as much base expansion and as much reduction in complexities as we would have liked”, there was still a huge reduction in complexities. “I expect a 10% expansion in the (tax) base due to just invoice-matching,” he had said.

While the government has iterated that the GST would not stoke inflation — GST will be zero on 50% of consumer price index basket and 5% on another 10% — former finance minister P Chidambaram said that the new tax could be inflationary in the short run. However, Subramanian said that with with actual tax incidence to be substantially lower under GST due to input tax credit, a downward bias on prices was to be expected. Firms disposing of stocks could also have a dampening effect on prices in the short run, he added.

Even as the industry is keeping its fingers crossed, the government has assured them that the anti-profiteering provision built into the relevant GST laws to prevent companies from not passing on the tax benefit under GST to consumers would be sparingly used. “I sincerely hope that we don’t have to really use the anti-profiteering mechanism,” Jaitley had said on Thursday. Chidambaram, however, sharply criticised the mechanism, saying it was wrong to assume that “the element of taxes decide at what price I sell my goods”. Since tax is only one of the things that make up costs, he said, if tax falls, it does not mean there should be a corresponding reduction in prices.

Even though 68 lakh businesses have already been issued provisional IDs by GSTN, the IT backbone for the new system, and the deadline for first filing of returns have been postponed to August 20 — invoice-wise returns can be filed as late as the first week of September — concern over the transition pains remained. Arun Kumar, chairman and CEO at KPMG in India, said: “The focus should now be on making the transition seamless and effective. Making compliance cost-effective, particularly for smaller businesses, is extremely important. The potential benefits of this landmark-reform will become real when the benefits of rationalised taxation accrue to consumers and business benefits from cost-efficiencies in logistics and streamlined processes.”

According to Shyamal Mukherjee, chairman, PwC India, “We are confident (that GST) will boost investors’ confidence in India, incentivise manufacturing and fuel the growth of the economy.” When asked about the quantum of extra growth due to GST by a TV channel earlier in the day, the chief economic adviser, however, merely said GST’s effect on the economy would be “positive”. “The medium-term impact of GST on macroeconomic indicators is expected to be extremely positive. Inflation will be reduced as cascading of taxes will be eliminated,” CII director general Chandrajit Banerjee said, adding that exports would emerge as more competitive in global markets, while FDI was likely to be encouraged.

Source: http://www.financialexpress.com/economy/historic-gst-launched-at-midnight-from-today-india-is-finally-one-nation-one-tax/744112/

GST spawns Rs 20,000 crore business for tax, tech consultants

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For decades, Sugal & Damani Group focused on lotteries before it entered the online bill payment business with Payworld.

Now, it has become a GST service provider (GSP), an entity that will help businesses register, upload electronic invoices and file on the technology platform, and plans to leverage its network.

Pune-based Vayana Network has been working with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to arrange funds and has no experience of taxation, but it too has become a GSP and is eyeing business from companies, their vendors as well as standalone SMEs.

Besides GSPs, GST has given birth to another set of entities called ‘application service providers’ or ASPs that will use sales and purchase data from taxpayers and convert it into GST returns for filing online.GST is spawning a $2 billion-3 billion (Rs 13,000 crore-20,000 crore) industry comprising software service providers, ASPs and GSPs, chartered accountants and consulting firms as the entire industry is undergoing business process re-engineering.

SAP and Oracle, the big daddies of the ERP business, may mop up revenues of at least $1 billion (Rs 6,500 crore) over the next two years, industry players say.

Homegrown Tally Solutions, which has close to 11 lakh users of its accounting software, has already got around six lakh subscriptions from businesses, which entitles them to free upgrades and access to all information.

While the cost of software varies between Rs 18,000 and Rs 54,000, each annual subscription fetches the company Rs 3,600 (for a single user) to Rs 10,800 (multiple users).

With 10,000 melas planned in the next one month, the company is out to garner as much business as possible while helping businesses tackle GST, said Tally Systems executive director Tejas Goenka.

Even a smaller player like the newly set up Ginesys is eyeing a turnover of around Rs 100 crore in three years, said co-founder Ashish Mittal. Then, there are the likes of ClearTax, which was set up to file income tax returns. Sensing a huge business opportunity it has expanded into the GST arena with its software and tie-ups with around 10,000 chartered accountants, said ClearTax founder CEO Archit Gupta.

Not surprisingly, companies have hired big time to meet the required demand. SAP and its partners have around 500-600 people working on implementing ERP solutions, business filing, supply chain and the app for filing returns, said Neeraj Athalye, who leads the firm’s GST adoption drive. Cleartax has hired around 400 in the last one year or so.The big four accounting firms too have ramped up. Deloitte’s indirect tax team has around 250 new recruits, while PwC has expanded its pool of CAs and systems executives by 200-250. While the billing for large companies runs into crores, including consulting services, the smaller companies are banking on volumes with some charging a fee of as low as Rs 100-200 a month for filing returns.

World Bank clears $250-million loan to train India’s job seekers

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The loan is aimed at making Indian youth more employable through reskilling

The World Bank has cleared a USD 250-million loan for making Indian youth more employable through reskilling, in a move that is seen to aid the Skill India Mission.

The multi-lateral lender is keen to support the Indian government in its efforts to better equip the young workforce with employable skills. It said the support will help the youth contribute to India’s economic growth and prosperity.

“The USD 250-million Skill India Mission Operation (SIMO), approved by the World Bank board of executive directors, will increase the market relevance of short-term skill development programmes (3-12 months or up to 600 hours) at the national and state level,” the Bank said in a statement.

Under the programme, adults in 15-59 years of age, underemployed or unemployed, will get the skill training.

It will also include the 1.2 crore youngsters in the age group of 15-29 years who are entering the labour market every year.

The programme has a mandate to provide placement and entrepreneurship opportunities to women and increase their exposure to skill training.

The Washington-headquartered World Bank’s SIMO is a six-year programme in support of the Indian government’s National Policy for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (2017-23).

SIMO will be implemented through the National Skill Development Mission and will specifically target labour market entrants.

According to an official skill gap analysis, India will require an additional 109 million skilled workers in 24 key sectors by 2022.

“This programme will support the government’s vision of investing in the human capital of India’s youth, enable greater off-farm employment and increase women’s participation in the labour market,” World Bank Country Director to India Junaid Ahmad said.

India continues to be on its path of structural reforms and a higher-skilled labour force can potentially serve as a catalyst in transforming it into a competitive middle income country, Ahmad said.

As per the Bank’s estimate, skill development capacity of the system would increase by the end of the programme so that at least 8.8 million youth with relevant training have an improved employment opportunity to raise their earnings.

The programme will benefit approximately 15,000 trainers and 3,000 assessors, it added.

Source: http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/india/world-bank-clears-250-million-loan-to-train-indias-job-seekers-2312081.html

GST Network reopens for registration

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Opened for first time for new assessees, tax practitioners

With barely five days left for the roll-out of the goods and services tax (GST), the GST Network (GSTN), a company that provides information technology systems for the GST, reopened registration for assessees on Sunday.

 

That was for new assessees not enrolled in the existing tax system — central excise duty, service tax and state-level value added tax — and for tax practitioners such as chartered accountants. Existing assessees which did not apply earlier can also enrol. The system also opened for those to be registered as tax deducted at source (TDS) or tax collected at source (TCS).

 

So far as smoothness of registration is concerned, Archit Gupta, chief executive officer (CEO) of Cleartax, that helps assessees register on GSTN, said, “We have an online service for fresh registrations and have received applications form small & medium businesses. So far, we haven’t faced any issues in the registration process for our customers.”

 

As many as 6.56 million registrations have already been made on the GSTN, which is 81 per cent of the existing 8.01 million registrations.

 

The new assessees, as well as existing ones, will be given a month’s time to register on the GSTN from Sunday.

 

Earlier, GSTN was opened in phases since November 16 for existing tax assessees. The GSTN had stopped registrations in between, as it was to transfer data to its own data centre from an earlier hired data centre. The GST portal has already opened two windows for enrolments — first between November 8 and April 30 and then from June 1 to June 15. This is the third window to allow all taxpayers enough time to migrate to the new regime.

 

Navin Kumar, chairman of GSTN, said, “We started the migration of existing taxpayers in November and wanted to close the process by March. The government however asked us not to close it, as many were still to register. At that time, the number of people coming to the portal fell to a few thousands compared to 200,000 a day (now). But we halted the process briefly, hoping it would trigger more people to come and register when we reopen the window.” Interestingly, there was no law that required them to register as GSTs then; the Bills were passed later.

 

“In fact, I am surprised why they came. We asked the tax department to persuade them to come and migrate, so the entire credit goes to CBEC. About six million came in the first instance and then 600,000 more came in the 15 days after that,” he said.

 

There were 8.01 million registrations in the existing system. Kumar said he wondered why the 1.4 million didn’t come. He believed one factor could be the exemption threshold under VAT for most states is Rs 5 lakh, and is Rs 20 lakh under the GST. Those with a turnover below the threshold have to register if they want to claim input tax credit.

 

It is expected not all assessees would migrate to the GSTN portal as, businesses with turnover of up to Rs 5 lakh are currently exempt from VAT. But, if they are supplying to other businesses or if want to pass on credit, then they need to register their business.

 

The existing assessees were given provisional IDs if they registered with their email ID and mobile numbers. But, for the second stage and final registration, the businesses have to give details of its business, such as the shareholding pattern of business, main place of business, additional place of business, directors and bank account details etc.

 

Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia had cautioned those with provisional IDs not to rush for registration on GSTN, as they had got one month more for registration.

 

The GST Council has given relaxation for filing of returns. The assessees can file detailed, invoice-based returns by September 5 for the month of July. Had this relaxation not been given, they would have to file these returns by August 10.

 

Similarly for August, these returns could be filed by September 20, a relaxation of 10 days.

 

Meanwhile, the GSTN released three sets of videos to reach out to assessees and help them register.

 

“To help the people register themselves to the new GST portal smoothly, we have released three videos just after the opening of the portal today (Sunday). The videos are an official guide for registration which will ensure a smooth roll out of the regime. The videos have been crafted to help all taxpayers including those who are not well versed with technology to complete their enrolments,” Kumar said.

 

Source: http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/gst-network-reopens-for-registration-117062600049_1.html