Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday urged GST officials to avoid taking a tough stance on taxpayers at the outset of any enquiry and opt for more stringent steps only as ‘a last resort’, even as she assured industry of swift efforts to resolve any niggles in the indirect tax regime that pose a hindrance to their business. 

Officials, the Minister said, must enforce GST well, but do it softly. “There should be no doubt in your [businesses’] mind about GST and if there is an issue, its resolution won’t take time because nowadays, even in the GST Council, I am seeing that whether it is the Ministers or the officials, they are agile in studying a subject and coming up with a solution,” Ms. Sitharaman said.

“You should flag your problems by coming here and officers will work on them. I can assure you the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) is nowadays speedily engaged in resolving problems,” she said after inaugurating a new CGST complex under the Udaipur Commissionerate that covers 13 districts.

Ms. Sitharaman asked officials to undertake outreach initiatives to help industry resolve any confusion on GST implementation issues across different sectors, saying this would pre-empt the need for grievances redressal at a later stage.

“We should focus on information sharing, then grievance redressal will automatically get reduced. GST officers’ approach should be to help the assessee and that has been the effort over the last two-three years. If that has to result in good outcomes, if assesses talk to officials from time to time and create a good synergy, this will boost business as well as reduce grievances. Officers will know on the tips of their fingers, the information relevant to individual sectors and the problems that they need resolution for, which is our responsibility,” the minister conveyed.