GST Council to form grievance redressal committee for taxpayers

Source: The Hindu BusinessLine

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has directed the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council to set up a grievance redressal committee for taxpayers at zonal and state levels. The Council at its 38^th meeting held on December 18 decided to put a structured mechanism in place under GST for taxpayers to tackle grievances of specific and general nature.

The Grievance Redressal Committee (GRC) will consist of both central tax and state tax officials, consultants, representatives of trade and industry and other Goods and Services Tax (GST) stakeholders. One of the mandates of the panel would be to take feedback on all the grievances and issues faced by taxpayers, including procedural difficulties and IT-related issues pertaining to GST and send on suggestions including on policy changes to the GST Council and the GSTN, the information technology (IT) infrastructure backbone for the indirect tax system.

The GST policy wing has arranged the guidelines and written to all the principal chief commissioners and chief commissioners to set up the cells. The CBIC said in a statement on Wednesday that the GRC will meet once every quarter or more frequently as decided by the co-chairs during its tenure of 2 years. Each committee will have up to 12 members from trader bodies and four members from chartered accountants, tax consultants and practitioners and will be co-chaired by the chief commissioner of central tax and the zonal or state chief.

The directive issued by the CBIC also said that if any member of the panel would be absent for three consecutive meetings, without sufficient reasons, the member will be replaced with a fresh nomination by the principal chief commissioner/chief commissioner of central tax in consultation with the chief commissioner/commissioner of state tax.

GSTN will also develop a portal for the recording of all grievances (including their scanned images) for time-bound handling. The details of action taken on all issues will be displayed on the portal, viewable by all stakeholders to check on the status of the resolution.