POWER TO CALL FOR INFORMATION UNDER GST LAW

[Dr. Sanjiv Agarwal]

Power to call for information (Section 151)

The Commissioner or an officer authorised by him may, by an order, direct any person to furnish information relating to any matter dealt with in connection with this Act, within such time, in such form, and in such manner, as may be specified therein.

Section 151 provides authority to the commissioner to collect any statistics/information relating to any matter under the Act from any person.

Finance Act, 2021 has substituted 151 w.e.f. 01.01.2022.Prior to this amendment, the erstwhile section 151 read as under:

As per Section 62(1) of the CGST Act, 2017, the proper officer is empowered to assess the tax liability on such registered taxable person to the best of his judgment taking into account all the relevant materials which is available, or which is gathered and issue an assessment order in FORM GST ASMT-13 within a period of five years from the date specified under Section 44 for furnishing of the annual return for the financial year to which the tax not paid relates.

The objective of this amendment was to empower the jurisdictional commissioner to call for information from any person relating to any matters dealt with in connection with the Act.

Comparison of section 151 (pre and post amendment)

Following comparison would reveal the changes made in section 151 prior to Finance Act, 2021 and post amendment:

S.No.	Criteria	Pre-amendment	Post amendment
1.	Date of applicability	From 01.07.2017 upto 31.12.2021)	W.e.f. 01.01.2022
2.	Power	Power to collect statistics	Power to call for any information
3.	Who is authorized	Commissioner or any officer authorized by him	Commissioner or any officer authorized by him
4.	When to exercise power	When the commissioner consider it necessary to do so	Not specified (can be done whenever commissioner deems it necessary)
5.	Information to be collected from	Any person in possession of information who may not be taxable person	Information to be collected from concerned persons
6.	How	By way of notification	By way of order
7.	Subject matter	On any matter relating to or dealt with in connection with CGST law, if considered necessary	On any matter dealt with in connection with CGST law
8.	Form & manner	As may be prescribed	As may be prescribed

Examples of information which may be collected

Since no specific information has been prescribed in section 151, following types of information may be collected for use within the Department and even for public information:

• Amount of tax collected
• Breakup of taxes collected
• Input tax credit availed & utilized
• Details of taxable turnover
• Details of exempt turnover
• Details of export of goods/services
• Industry specific information/statistics

Use of information

The information so collected by Department may be used for use by the Government, tax policy formulation, information dissemination to public and media, publication in reports and sector/industry specific amendments. However, the information collected cannot be used for any proceedings under the Act except for the purposes of launching prosecution.