81,500 city companies migrate to GST portal; over 1.25 lakh still pending

Mumbai: Around 81,500 companies from the city have already migrated to the GST portal so far and the service tax department is hopeful that the remaining ones will be doing so by the April 30 deadline.

"As per the revised estimate, there are 2,07,000 active companies in Mumbai and out of them around 81,000 have already migrated to the GST portal. This includes the over 15,000 companies that migrated during the five-day GST migration camp that ended today," chief commissioner of service tax department, Mumbai zone, Piyusha Patnaik told PTI today.

The department has conducted eight such camps in the city so far.

"Chief commissioners of service tax and Central Excise from Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur are meeting here tomorrow to finalise the jurisdiction of various GST commissionerates in Mumbai and the rest of Maharashtra," chief commissioner of Central Excise Subhash Varshney said.

The department is also embarking on a massive programme to educate taxpayers about GST, through seminars, workshops and townhall meetings. A programme is also being conducted in coordination with the Maharashtra sales tax department to ensure outreach to all taxpayers in the state, Varshney said.

The department has also embarked on a massive training and outreach program for trade and industry, after successfully training its officers in GST law, he added.

Work was started in the area of capacity building right from last September, when Constitutional Amendment Bill was passed and GST Council started its deliberations.

During September-December 2016, the Mumbai Central Excise department had conducted a number of training programmes on GST draft law and business rules, at various locations.