Ministerial groups have been established to examine the GST exempt list and identify causes of evasion

The Finance Ministry has set up two committees of state finance ministers who would review current tax slabs and GST exempt items, identify potential evasion sources and suggest changes in IT systems. The Group of Ministers (GoM) on rate rationalisation would also review inverted duty structure, recommend rationalisation measures, including merger of tax rate slabs.

The seven-member panel, led by Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and including West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra, Kerala Finance Minister K N Balagopal, and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tarkishore Prasad, will present its report in two months.

It would also examine the supply of products and services excluded from the Goods and Services Tax, with the goal of expanding the tax base and preventing the ITC chain from being broken. To plug revenue leakage, the GoM on GST system improvements would identify probable causes of evasion and advise modifications in corporate processes and IT systems.

Ajit Pawar, the Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, will be joined by Manish Sisodia, the Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi, Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, the Tamil Nadu Finance Minister, and T S Singh Deo, the Finance Minister of Chhattisgarh.

The panel would look at the IT tools and interfaces available to tax officers and offer ways to improve them. It would also look at how data analysis could be used to improve tax compliance and suggest methods to improve cooperation between central and state tax officers. On September 17, the GST Council, chaired by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, decided to establish these two GoMs.