As many as 84,176 traders in Maharashtra have not filed their Goods and Services Tax 3B returns (GSTR-3B) since last October and more than 10 per cent of these defaulters now stand to lose their registration, according to the data received from the state GST department.
Over 8,800 traders, who remain untraceable, were served notices that their GST registration would be cancelled for defaulting on returns. Without a GST number, these traders will not be able to continue with their businesses, said an official from the department.
The GST department began its crackdown on defaulters in the last week of June and officials had visited the registered addresses of all 84,176 defaulting traders since. “Of these, 8,861 traders were found to be inactive and were not doing business at their declared point of business. They have been served notices and will lose their registration,” said the official.
GSTR-3B is a monthly return that taxpayers need to file till June 2018. Of the six zones in Maharashtra — Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Nashik, Kolhapur, Nagpur — Mumbai had the most number of defaulters. Of the 20,025 defaulting traders, 3,171 will lose their registration. Thane zone recorded 14,450 traders, who hadn’t filed their returns, and of these 2,097 were inactive.
“If any of the traders, who have been served notices, are doing genuine business, they will have to file an appeal against the notice. If the appellate authority deems it fit, the registrations will be restored,” said the official.
Rajiv Jalota, state GST commissioner, said: “It was important to weed out the non-existent dealers from the system, as they could be issuing fake invoices and gaming the system. There was also an unnecessary cost towards tracking these inactive traders.” He said that the department was currently on a massive crackdown mission.
Jalota said some of the inactive traders could be dealers who had to get registration numbers for certain work contracts but did not get them. “In such cases, too, they need to file their returns every month,” he said. In the next phase, the department will begin unilateral assessment of the rest of the defaulters. “After the assessment, we will issue demand recovery notices and attach their assets for recovery,” said Jalota.
Until July last year, adherence was better as 87.25 per cent of the over 9 lakh registered traders had filed their GST-3B returns. However, following confusion over deadlines, the percentage of taxpayers filing the mandatory GSTR-3B dropped to 62.44 in October last year.