The Centre on Saturday issued a notification to include the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) under the ambit of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). With this, the GSTN is among those entities that have been mandated to share information with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the PMLA Act. These changes have been made under Section 66 of the PMLA, which provides for disclosure of information.
Government-issued a notification to bring the Goods & Services Tax Network (GSTN) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). Information stored on GSTN can be now shared under PMLA Act. pic.twitter.com/VrhUq3vuCY
— ANI (@ANI) July 8, 2023
As per this notification, the FIU and the ED will also share information with the GSTN if they find that any GST assessee is involved in suspicious forex transactions. GST offences such as taking fake input tax credits, fake invoices, etc. will also be covered under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) is an information technology system which manages the GST portal. The government is aided by private players in its efforts to monitor domestic financial activity with the GSTN.
The portal is aimed at providing shared IT infrastructure and services to Central and State governments, taxpayers and other stakeholders for implementation of GST. Some of GSTN’s functions are facilitating registration, forwarding returns to relevant Central and State authorities, computation and settlement of IGST, matching tax payment details with banking network, providing analysis of taxpayers’ profile and matching invoices.