The State Goods and Services Tax department is switching over to the GST Network (GSTN) back office system from Tuesday (March 1).
Finance Minister K. N. Balagopal on Monday inaugurated the migration to the common GSTN platform from the National Informatics Centre (NIC)-developed software so far used by the State. Calling it an ''important change,'' Mr. Balagopal said a common system is advantageous for all stakeholders, including the State, the Centre and taxpayers.
The migration to the Model-2 Back Office Software will help avoid delays in adapting the State-level tax mechanism to decisions taken by the Centre and the GST Council, ensure transparency in accounting and plug leaks in tax revenues, he said.
''In the initial days of the GST, Kerala and some other States had used the NIC software, which was advanced for its time. But during the course of time, GSTN has developed its own system and upgraded it. It is now better that the Centre and States are on a compatible platform, especially since the IT backbone is the most important part of GST,'' said Mr. Balagopal.
Ready access to data is a major advantage of the new system, GSTN officials said. The State department will also have access to an extensive management information system (MIS) and GSTN's business intelligence and fraud analytics (BIFA). ''Over a period of time, the data of GST has expanded. It is only a natural corollary that every State and the centre would have to come to a common platform,'' said GSTN CEO Manish Kumar Sinha.
Rajesh Kumar Singh, Additional Chief Secretary (Finance), presided. Taxes Commissioner Rathan U. Kelkar and Taxes Special Commissioner Mohammed Y. Safirulla also spoke.
