Now that the Central government has moved the roll-out of the GST regime to July 1, the All Kerala Distributors’ Association has asked the State government to postpone the deadline for traders’ migration from VAT to GST to February 28.

Association general secretary Babu Kunnoth pointed out that the Commercial Taxes Department had earlier asked traders to sign up for the GST online by January 24, but later postponed the date to February 5.

Mr. Kunnoth told The Hindu that it would be hard for the trading community to migrate to the GST regime in the next less than two weeks. He pointed out that only less than a half of the 2.5 lakh traders paying VAT could so far migrate to the new regime.

He noted that for GST enrolling, a trader needed an Aadhaar number and a TAN (tax indication number). Since there were thousands of traders without an Aadhaar card it would be really tough for them to get enrolled. They would have to get 14 documents from various government departments to get enrolled. This would take a long time.

“The only way to ensure the migration of the entire trading community is to postpone the deadline to at least February 28,” he said.