64 lakh old taxpayers have migrated to GST: GSTN Chairman

New Delhi : Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) CEO Prakash Kumar on Saturday said over 64 lakh old taxpayers have migrated to the new taxation scheme, adding that returns from the month of July are still being filed.

Addressing the National conclave on ‘GST, A Catalyst for Economic Growth and Ease of Doing Business’ organised by the PHD Chambers of Commerce and Industry here, Kumar claimed that until Friday, 26.3 lakh new tax payers were added to the system.

“81.94 percent of taxpayers have filed returns for month of July, and this number is still increasing. 45.6 percent have filed returns for the month of August. On August 20 alone, 13.76 lakh returns were filed on single day on Aug 20,” he said.

Kumar also stated that 35.5 cr worth of invoice data was fed on the system, with 11 lakh payment transactions on the last two days of filing returns in August.

The recent past has seen criticism of the GSTN, as the servers crashed multiple times due to an overload of taxpayers filing returns. Deadlines were also pushed to further accommodate delayed payments due to the technical glitches.

However, the GSTN modified some of the features on its portal over the past month, enabling the system to be more robust and allow glitch-free tax payment facility.

Further, a group of ministers under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi were reportedly earlier in the month summoned to look into the issues faced by businesses while filing returns and paying taxes on the GSTN portal. (ANI)