GST, or Goods and Services Tax, is an indirect tax imposed on the supply of goods and services. It is a multi-stage, destination-oriented tax imposed on every value addition, which managed to replace multiple indirect taxes, including VAT, excise duty, service taxes, etc.
GST- Particulars
Under the One-Nation, One-Tax Regime , a simple 4-fold breakup has been formulated which allows both the centre and state to levy taxes.
The four different types of GST are given below:
- Central Goods and Services Tax : CGST is charged on the intra state supply of products and services.
- State Goods and Services Tax : SGST, like CGST, is charged on the sale of products or services within a state.
- Integrated Goods and Services Tax : IGST is charged on inter-state transactions of products and services.
- Union Territory Goods and Services Tax : UTGST is levied on the supply of products and services in any of the Union Territories in the country, viz. Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Lakshadweep, and Chandigarh. UTGST is levied along with CGST.
All traders who earn turnovers in excess of Rs.20 lakh in a financial year will have to register under the Goods and Services Tax.
Some of the entities who are eligible to register for Goods and Service Tax are :
- E-commerce aggregators
- Individuals who supply through e-commerce aggregators
- Individuals who pay tax as per the reverse change mechanism
- Agents of input service distributors and suppliers
- Non-Resident individuals who pay tax
- Businesses that have a turnover that is more than the threshold limit
- Individuals who have registered before the GST law was introduced
There are a whole lot of activities that form a part of the process of Returns under GST. These include:
- Filing different types of GST returns electronically
- Uploading invoice wise details
- Auto-population of details with regards to input tax credit from returns filed by suppliers to return filed by recipients
- Matching of invoice information
- Automatic reversal of ITC in the event of mismatch of the invoice information
Taxpayers registered under GST are required to follow the return procedure to be able to file returns easily and take the benefit of Input Tax Credit (ITC). A regular taxpayer under GST is required to file two monthly returns and one annual return. However, there are special category taxpayers registered under GST who need to furnish separate returns. These taxpayers include:
- Non-resident taxable persons
- Taxpayers registered under the Composition Scheme
- Persons allotted with Unique Identification Number (UIN)
- Input Service Distributors
- Persons required to deduct TDS or collect TCS under GST
