GST tax portal to handle 3 lakh users per second from next month: Government

The government on Thursday said the GSTN network would be scaled up to handle more than double the current load within a month and cater to about three lakh users per second from the current capacity of about 1.2 lakh. In a meeting between Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and various industry bodies, tax experts and GSPs, the challenges in filing returns were discussed at length and it was informed that the GST portal to file taxes would soon be able to cater to a much larger volume of users.
The government has maintained that the spike in concurrent users during the final days of tax filing puts pressure on the GST portal, which subsequently crashes. It is seen that during the last few days of return filing the network sees peak traffic of about 5 lakh concurrent users.

“The Government officials during the meeting mentioned that the GSTN Portal's current capacity is to handle around 1.2 Lakh logins at the same time. This capacity is being increased to around 3 to 4 lakh login by next month. Once the above is done, it is likely to result in better performance of the GSTN portal and thus, smoother compliances,” said Harpreet Singh, Partner, GST & Customs, KPMG in India.

The threshold for composition scheme was also discussed in detail where there was a strong pitch to increase it from the current threshold of Rs. 75 lakh to Rs. 1.5 crore. This would be in sync with the earlier excise exemption of Rs. 1.25 crore. According to the FM, latest figures suggest that out of 68 lakh dealers who file returns, about 14 lakh dealers have opted for the composition scheme, which would mean there is a significant base of tax payers within that scheme.

The reverse charge mechanism was also discussed in detail and the recommendation was made that there should be a flat rate of 12%, which means every time you buy something from an unregistered dealer you do not need to keep finding the rates and the classification for each item.

Exports:
While the law says an exporter will get his refund within 7 days, the same has not happened. In fact the form, GST RFD-01 is yet to be activated and exporters who have carried out exports since July have not been able to claim any refund. “For the exporters, problems in filing of LUT/ Bonds on account of varied practices being followed in different jurisdictions, getting accustomed to the new compliance of filing of LUT / Bond by service exporters, blockage of working capital etc. were some of the issues that were discussed in today's meeting. The Finance Ministry duly made a note of it and promised to resolve the same at the earliest,” says Singh.

Service Providers:
Earlier service providers needed one centralized registration under Service Tax rules, but under GST they may need to register across multiple states. Various services providers used the forum to request the government that that as far as assessment is concerned, there should be a provision of one central audit, which can be where the taxpayer is headquartered or the state where you have the highest turnover.