CBIC creating an SoP soon for enforcement actions by GST officers

New Delhi: The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) is working on an SoP for enforcement actions by GST field offices and is profiling taxpayers by using artificial intelligence and machine learning, its chief Vivek Johri said on Friday.

Speaking at the GST Day celebration to mark five years of the indirect tax regime, Johri said the Centre and states are working on a joint strategy for enforcement.

"We want to prescribe SoP (standard operating procedure) for enforcement activity. The Board is already working on that," Johri said.

He said there is a need to work on further improving compliance.

"Depending on where the taxpayer is on a compliance scale, hand-holding them … We should go for a concerted enforcement strategy. We are trying to do it in a less intrusive way, using AI and ML for profiling wherever possible," he said.

Johri said it is not left to the discretion of officers to go after taxpayers.

The department also wants to improve data quality in the returns, besides a more systematised grievance redressal mechanism, particularly for MSME and dispute settlement mechanisms.

(With PTI inputs)