EY, Microsoft team up to offer online GST compliance support

Ernst and Young (EY), a global provider of assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services, has teamed up with technology giant Microsoft to launch 'DigiGST', an integrated Application Service Provider (ASP) and GST Suvidha Provider (GSP) solution that provides organisations with end-to-end GST compliance support.

DigiGST is hosted on the highly secure Microsoft Azure platform with a scalable and flexible infrastructure capable of handling large volumes of transactions and unpredictable data patterns, a joint press release stated.

The platform will offer 24x7 and 365 days monitoring and control of data security by two ISO 27001 certified EY security operations centres (SOCs) in Chennai and Trivandrum, according to the release.

''The launch of GST is perhaps India's most significant and complex economic reform - the largest yet most complex change in the world - and technology will play a critical role in this transformation journey. DigiGST combines our tax knowledge and technology expertise in a way that it adds value to businesses, helping them fully realise the benefits of GST while meeting compliance requirements in the most digital or user-friendly way'', says Rajiv Memani, chairman, EY India and chairman, global emerging markets committee, EY.

The government's GST Network (GSTN) will be the technology backbone of the new GST regime and it is estimated that over 8 million taxpayers will upload in excess of 3 billion invoices in a month on the GSTN. This is unique to India's GST network as this level of transaction volume has not been managed in any other tax governance system anywhere in the world, the release noted.

DigiGST uses intelligent tax automation supported by industry specific algorithms and a reliable and resilient technology platform that is capable of handling a large volume of transaction data. I6t also ensures protection of business-critical data with managed cloud backups and disaster recovery as a built-in service, says Bertrand Launay, chief operating officer, Microsoft India.

''Tax compliance work in India has hitherto been about manual extraction and processing of transaction data, and submitting returns to the tax authority in a prescribed manner. This is set to change with GST. Built by our professionals with deep tax domain and sector knowledge in collaboration with our technology experts, DigiGST helps businesses optimise the benefits of GST,'' said Sudhir Kapadia, partner and national tax leader, EY India.

EY's GSP will connect with the GSTN system seamlessly over a secured leased-line and upload taxpayer data in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format using Application Programming Interface (APIs) and the license key accorded by the GSTN.

EY said its ASP will provide all the value-added services to make GST compliance easier while the ASP-GSP combine will provide seamless end-to-end GST compliance services to taxpayers.

The DigiGST uses robust in-memory multilevel reconciliation for timely error detection and appropriate credit availment to taxpayers thus reducing their working capital blockage, it added.

The DigiGST solution while being customisable, automated and intuitive is also highly resilient, providing the best security infrastructure and complying with the highest accepted industry standards, according to EY.

DigiGST offers role-based access control privileges to prevent any individual other than the one assigned by the company leadership to interact with the complete dataset. This solution uses data virtualisation to prevent data manipulation and theft by individuals with access to the solution interface, it added.