In a move towards implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST), the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) is testing the e-filing of returns to central excise and service tax assessees via facilitation centres.

ICAI is the facilitator of Finance Ministrys e-initiative to provide facility of e-filing of returns and documents to Central Excise and Service Tax assessees through Certified Facilitation Centres.

This is a move towards GST. In GST, you cannot be successful unless you are on the electronic format. One you have the entire data on the electronic platform, so to that extent you are going to gain and from here you would move onto GST straightway, the only thing extra would be larger number of taxes, Amarjit Chopra, president, ICAI, told DNA.

The official added there are 65,000 chartered accountants in practice and about 35,000 firms; the institute is expecting 20,000 facilitation centres to come up in 2010.

The institute members can also provide other services to customers, which would help to earn additional stream of revenue. A Certified Facilitation Centre (CFCs) is a facility, which will be set up and operated by practicing chartered accountants in individual capacity or as proprietor or firm.

Chopra is expecting 1,200 firms to converge to IFRS in the first phase of the implementation. ICAI has said that all insurance companies will convert by April 1, 2012, while scheduled commercial banks and those urban co-operative banks (UCBs), which have a net worth in excess of Rs 300 crores will convert by April 1, 2013 in compliance with the first set of Accounting Standards.