Commercial tax dept to use IT professionals during inspection

CHENNAI: To ensure that tax evaders do not escape with the help of technology, the commercial tax department will engage Information Technology (IT) and software professionals at the time of conducting inspections. A GO was issued to give effect to the order.

According to the GO, Commercial Taxes department "In order to have an efficient, inspection, persons with thorough knowledge of different software and hardware who can get into the ERP/billing systems used in any manufacturing set up along with the point of sale systems (POS) and retrieve data from hardware and cloud, may accompany the proper officers during the course of the inspection so as to have a correct and complete detail of the accounts maintained by the taxable person."

Section 67 of Tamil Nadu GST Act, 2017 gives power to the Commercial Taxes Department to conduct surprise inspections at the business places. During the inspection the officers deputed for the work were not technically capable to login and retrieve the data due to which the complete details of tax evasion could not be assessed.

To address the shortfall, Minister for Registration and Commercial Taxes P Moorthy made an announcement in the Assembly that IT and software professionals will be used during the inspections.