CBIC creating an SoP soon for enforcement actions by GST officers

The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) is developing a SoP for activities taken by GST field offices to enforce the law and is employing artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a profile of taxpayers, its chief Vivek Johri stated.

Speaking at the GST Day ceremony to honour the five-year anniversary of the indirect tax system, Johri said the federal government and the states are developing a collaborative enforcement approach. “We want to set up a standard operating procedure for enforcement activity.” That is already being addressed by the Board,” Johri said. He stated that efforts should be made to further increase compliance. “We should adopt a coordinated enforcement strategy, depending on where the taxpayer is on a scale of compliance, rather than hand-holding them.” Whenever possible, we use AI and ML for profiling in an effort to make the process less intrusive,” he stated.

Johri claimed that officers are not free to pursue taxpayers at their whim.

In addition to a more systematised grievance redressal mechanism, particularly for MSME, and dispute settlement methods, the department also intends to improve the quality of the data in the returns.

Source: Business Today