Patna, Nov. 24: The Bihar government is starting a massive, 16-day online drive from November 30 to migrate traders, dealers and other commercial tax payers registered with it to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) system portal.

"GST will be introduced across the country from April 1, 2017, and it is the most important reform in indirect taxes. It will bring a uniform system of classification of goods and services, common rate, structure and exemptions. To ensure its smooth functioning we need existing tax payers registered with us to enrol with the GST system or network," said commercial taxes minister Bijendra Prasad Yadav.

He added that only those registered traders with valid PAN will be eligible to migrate, the process of which will continue till December 15.

He said around 2.5 lakh taxpayers are registered with the commercial taxes department in Bihar, 2.09 lakh of them with a valid PAN. The remaining 41,000 tax payers, who have submitted invalid or faulty PAN, will have to submit valid PANs or be left out of the GST network. Notices have been sent. They will be penalised if they fail to register.

An existing taxpayer registered with the commercial taxes department needs to visit www.gst.gov.in and enrol by using the user ID and password of the department's existing tax-paying portal. An application reference number (ARN) is generated after enroling with digital signature. It is a unique number assigned to each transaction completed at the GST system portal.

Tax payers will get a new GST number, provisional ID and password, after which they will have to go to the GST website, change user ID and password and upload basic information about their business, location, traded commodity. Once complete, they will be able to avail various facilities including filing of returns, payment of tax and amendment among other things.

Once implemented, GST will subsume 11 types of taxes, including value added tax (VAT), central excise, service tax, central sales tax, luxury tax and entry tax.

Tax collection fear

Bijendra said a fall in commercial taxes collection was expected in light of demonetisation as the entire market had come to a virtual standstill due to lack of sales and drop in consumption.

"We don't have the estimates, and we don't know what is going to happen a few months later. But yes, we are seeing a drop in our tax collections," Bijendra said. However, the minister said he and his party were in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's demonetisations move.