National Anti-Profiteering Authority rolls out national online community via LocalCircles and empowers citizens to report cases of profiteering

12th April 2018, New Delhi: Since the launch of GST last year, thousands of consumers have reported cases of profiteering by sellers leading to their monthly household bills increasing. This was happening because some sellers were charging GST over the MRP of the product while others were not passing the benefits of Input Tax Credit to consumers, thereby indulging in illegal profiteering. To empower citizens across India to report cases of profiteering easily, the National Anti-Profiteering Authority has started the “Anti Profiteering” online community on LocalCircles. Over 60,000 active citizens of India have already joined the community.

The community will enable anyone to easily report cases of profiteering thereby alerting the active citizens as well as the National Anti-Profiteering Authority of such malpractices. While these leads will not replace the formal complaint mechanism, it will provide leads and alerts to the authority thereby making GST compliance a true Citizen-Government partnership. The National Anti-Profiteering Authority is committed to ensuring cases of profiteering under GST regime are not there and corrective action is taken upon by companies at the earliest. Such an initiative not only empowers citizens but also provides speed of information flow for faster action.

The National Anti-Profiteering Authority has also simplified the format of complaint as well where the requirement of HSN code etc. has been done away with. Consumers can also access the National Anti-Profiteering Authority website at http://naa.gov.in

Types of cases that citizens are encouraged to report include:

• • Selling of goods at MRP that does not reflect the revised GST rates
• • Charging of GST above MRP
• • Receipt of input tax credit by a business but not passing it to the end consumer

All citizens wanting to participate or report a profiteering issue must access the online community at http://bit.ly/antiprofiteering-community

About National Anti-Profiteering Authority

The National Anti-Profiteering Authority (NAA) is the institutional mechanism under GST law to check the unfair profit-making activities by the trading community. The Authority’s core function is to ensure that the benefits of the reduction is GST rates on goods and services made by GST Council and proportional change in the Input tax credit passed on to the ultimate consumers and recipient respectively by way of reduction in the prices by the suppliers.