The government has enabled the Director of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU)-India to send cash transaction reports, suspicious transaction reports etc. to GSTN for making them available to GST authorities. As per Minister of State (MoS) Finance, Pankaj Chaudhary, the government through this step aims to check the problem of GST evasion in the country.
The Minister of State added that this was done via a notification recently. However, he clarified that there is no proposal under consideration to bring GSTN under the purview of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Chaudhary was replying to a question by DR. G. Ranjith Reddy, Manickam Tagore and Venkatesh Netha Borlakunta. The question was whether the GSTN has been brought under the purviews of PMLA, if so, whether this decision was taken without any discussion in the 50th Meeting and many States including Karnataka, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana opposed this move. However, MoS Finance stated that there was no proposal to bring GSTN under the purview of PMLA.
“The aims and objectives of GSTN is to provide common and shared IT infrastructure and services to the Central and State Governments, Tax Payers and other stakeholders for implementation of the Goods & Services Tax (GST). The aims and Objectives of PMLA are to prevent money-laundering and to provide for confiscation of property derived from, or involved in, money-laundering and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. There is no proposal under consideration to bring GSTN under the purview of PMLA,” Pankaj Chaudhary said.
As per this notification floated by the Ministry of Finance a month ago, the FIU and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) will share information with the GSTN in case of suspicious forex transactions, fake input tax credits, fake invoices, etc.
However, officials at the Ministry of Finance clarified that the flow of information would be from FIU and ED to GSTN rather than the other way round.
Many state Finance Ministers including Delhi and Punjab raised concerns at the 50th GST Council meeting about bringing GSTN directly under ED which could be detrimental for the regular taxpayers.
However, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman clarified later that GSTN will not share information with ED. The move was in line with India’s review later this year under the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which is a global money-laundering watchdog.
First Published: Aug 8, 2023 3:17 PM IST
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