The Union government will partner the Institute of Cost Accountants of India (ICAI) to train accountants on GST (Goods and Services Tax). The partnership is expected to help assessees for better compliance with the sweeping tax reform.

“More than 100,000 accountants will be trained specifically on GST-related compliances and accounting in the next six to eight months. ICAI will partner the Government of India to train these accountants”, said Amit Anand Apte, president of ICAI.

The move of the government is tipped to help 12 million GST assesses in filing their returns in a hassle free manner.

“Anyone with a background of accounting can do the course. The details of the curriculum are expected to be announced by the government in the next week. The course duration will be about six months”, said Apte.

ICAI had initiated discussions with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs for such a course. Pursuant to the talks, the ministry had moved the NITI Aayog for approval.

NITI Aayog has given its nod, he added.

It may be noted that GST, which subsumed 17 indirect taxes, including excise duty and service tax, was introduced on July 1, 2017. There are about 12 million assessees under the new tax regime which is more than twice over the base of 4.5 million tax payers registered under Value Added Tax (VAT).

GST revenue had first crossed the landmark figure in April when the collections were Rs 1034.59 billion. Since then, collections have hovered around the Rs 900 billion mark.

When GST was introduced, ICAI had set up 100 help desks across the country. Today, any query on GST coming through our portal is addressed within 48 hours, Apte said.

ICAI is also the first institute to have launched a course on the new indirect tax. The professional institute is organizing a three-day national seminar beginning December 21 on taxation in Bhubaneswar on the theme- “Reformed Taxation System- Catalyst to Sustained Economic Growth”.