Soon, the tax department will be sharing the income tax return (ITR) data of business persons with the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) officer. The move is aimed at spotting income anomalies or mismatches between their GST returns and ITR. Clearly, business persons need to ensure that their income tax returns and GST returns correlate. In simple terms, a business person whose income as per ITR is sharply at variance with what is declared in his/her GST returns would come under the lens.
Before GST was introduced, the department could not reconcile the data filed by the business persons in his/her sales tax return/service tax return and ITR. This was because sales tax return was filed at the various state levels and service tax return was filed at the national level. However, post the introduction of GST, such data will now be available at the central level which makes exchange of data between the two authorities easy. This move will apply for all those assessees who have business income and file the returns specified for those with this income i.e. ITR 3 to ITR 7. As per the order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) dated April 30, 2019, important financial fields such as – status of filing of ITR, turnover, gross total income, turnover ratio, gross total income range, turnover range and any other field which will be decided by the concerned authorities themselves will be shared by the income tax department with the GSTN officers.
The complete CBDT order can be accessed at: http://www.a2ztaxcorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/IMG-20190430-WA0005.jpg
