Bengaluru: As companies and other entities are still trying to understand the nuances of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and prepare them to fully become compliant, Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce (BCIC) has launched an initiative to partner with industry to create broad-based awareness on the new taxation policy. To this effect BCIC has set up a 11-member panel of leading experts (most of whom have been in various GST formulating Advisory Committees formed by the Government of India) to help industry address and resolve their questions and concerns on various provisions of the new law.
P V Srinivasan, Chairman, Indirect Taxes Expert Committee, BCIC and Advisor Wipro Limited said: “After interacting with a cross section of companies over the last two months, we have curated over 1,500 FAQs which covers the entire gamut of the new law. This is in addition to FAQs released by the Government. We have set up a panel of experts with deep domain expertise who will answer each of the queries that may arise to ensure smooth transition and compliance to the new law.”
Keeping in mind, that there will be a lot of teething problems to understand the GST regime in its totality, even the Government of India has issued a notification that compliance to the new law will be relaxed for the first three months.
G Shivadass, Co-Chairman, Indirect Taxes Expert Committee, BCIC and Principal Partner, Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan said: “BCIC Help Desk will be a one-point stop to facilitate a quicker and smoother migration to GST and will be open to all companies. The Help Desk will address queries of member and non-member companies and also have structured face-to-face interactions to discuss and resolve complex issues relating to GST.
BCIC has also launched a GST Portal withdia.com where companies can access GST content in a contextual manner – with an easy to use, search mechanism, retrieve relevant information, with other contextual content and comments from experts and relevant legislative provisions; personalized dashboard on GST, sharing relevant content with others on the portal directly and it will also enable downloading the app on iOS and Android.
In addition to setting up the help Desk and the Portal, BCIC also proposes to organise a series of Workshops, roping in the best minds on all emerging issues related to the new law so that companies are fully conversant of GST in the next six months down the lane.
BCIC GST HELP DESK PANEL
1)P V Srinivasan, Advisor, Wipro, (2) G Shivadass, Principal Partner, Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan, (3) Venkataramani, Partner, SDU, (4) N R Badrinath, Partner, SDU, (5) Mahesh Jaising, Partner, BMR Consultants, (6) Iqbal Maniyar, Consultant, Reliance Industry Limited, (7) Deepak Kumar Jain, Director, Accolet Advisors Private Limited, (8) Madhur Harlalka, Partner, Walker Chandiok & Co LLP, (9) Naveen Rajpurohit, Partner – Indirect Tax, BDO India LLP, (10) Kunal Wadhwa, Partner, PwC and (11) Syed Altaf Hussain, Partner, Maheshwari & Associates.
