In a hurriedly convened meeting, industry bodies and trade associations have decided to appeal to the State government for postponement of online filing of VAT documents.

“We want it deferred by four months, until after the Assembly elections in the State,” D Nandakumar, President, Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Coimbatore (ICCIC), said.

Lack of training
Stating that they were still not conversant with online filing and that only around 1,500 had undergone training out of over one lakh assesses in this zone, the ICCIC president said that there were plenty of issues that had to be resolved in the new system.

With just a day left for implementation of the Total Solution Project (TSP) of the Commercial Taxes department (it is expected to go live from April 1), industry associations, fearing hitches in switch over to the online system of filing, said that even the department staff have not be fully trained yet.

The department has been creating awareness, conducting training programmes (in batches) for the members of various trade associations here.

“We realised some practical difficulties in adoption only when we attended the training and have represented the same to the government,” said Codissia President EK Ponnuswamy.

Small units’ plea
Representatives of small and micro units said that they could ill-afford to buy a computer and engage a systems person fulltime to make the entries and file documents online.

Ponnuswamy added that the MM Form for transporters lacked clarity and penalty clause for tax credit rather heavy making the old method more user-friendly.

Association sources said that their views were not sought before evolving the TSP system. “We understand that the government wants to plug revenue loss, but there are practical issues in implementation,” the representatives of various associations said.