The Cabinet on Wednesday gave the nod for restructuring the State Goods and Services Tax (GST) department. Finance Minister K. N. Balagopal said the reforms will be in place soon.
The department will have three main wings: taxpayer services, áudit and intelligence and enforcement. The taxpayer services wing will handle matters related to the registration, filing of returns, refunds and grievance redressal.
The scrutiny of returns, audits and routine monitoring of revenue will be the responsibility of the audit wing. Forty-one intelligence units and 47 enforcement units will make up the intelligence and enforcement wing.
Apart from these, the department will also have new cells for tax research and policy, review, CAG-related matters, advance ruling, public relations and inter-administration and a central registration unit.
For taxation purposes, there will be 31 taxpayer divisions and 94 taxpayer units. It has been decided to form 140 audit teams under a joint commissioner for auditing of taxpayers based on risk-profiling as prescribed in the GST Act.
In line with the reforms, the existing law and appeal offices, IT management cell, legal cell, internal audit and vigilance cell, administration and statistics and performance management cell undergo changes.
The department has also upgraded posts and redeployed staff as part of the restructuring process.
