GST: Over 10,000 new registrations during lockdown, confirms Goods and Services Tax Network

Amid coronavirus lockdown, the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) on Sunday said that tax officials have processed around 10,077 cases of new registration during the first 10 days of the nationwide lockdown, from March 25 to April 3. In a statement GSTN said that a total number of 20,273 registration-related cases were processed during the first 10 days of lockdown.

"This includes 10,077 cases of new registration, 3,377 cases of core amendment, 3,784 cases ofAcancellation by application, 1,966 cases of cancellation by suo moto and 1,069 cases ofArevocation. Similarly, 7876 cases of refund were also processed during the period," it said.

Further, GSTN has said that it has enabled tax officers of different states and union territories (UTs) to access their offices during the lockdown period. The company is providing secured access to the office network on request.

Till March 31, it had enabled 1748 tax officers from 18 states and union territories through the Virtual Private Network (VPN), a secure way to access the office network. This is in addition to the three hill states which already connect to GST System using VPN.

"Apart from 1.23 crores taxpayers, GSTN provides the IT services to 29 states and UTs also for implementation of GST. For these states and UTs, GSTN provides back-office applications like processing of registration application, processing of refund applications, audit, assessment, appeal etc. for all their tax officers, which is different from the front-end interface used by the taxpayer, i.e. GST portal," it said.  

Soon after the lockdown was announced, GSTN, the IT backbone of GST, offered secured access to all these states to enable their officers to work remotely.