CBEC renamed as CBIC; Twitter handle updated

The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has been renamed as Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC). The apex indirect tax authority also updated its twitter handle to 'cbic_india' from the earlier 'cbec_india'. "With the enactment of Finance Act, 2018, CBEC is renamed as Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC). This change was necessitated due to enactment of Goods and Services Tax (GST) which has consolidated multiple indirect taxes into one tax," it said in a tweet.

With excise duty, service tax, along side nearly a dozen other central and state levies being subsumed in the Goods and Services Tax (GST), the ambit of the apex indirect tax authority has widened.

Through Finance Bill, 2018, the government amended the Central Boards of Revenue (CBR) Act, 1963, as well as the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017, replacing CBEC with CBIC.

The re-organisation of field formations of the CBEC for implementation of GST, and its renaming to CBIC was approved by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in March last year.

GST was introduced from July 1, 2017. With legislative approval not in place for change of name, CBEC has been notifying all rules and provisions of the new indirect tax regime.

As per the reorganisation plan, the CBIC will supervise the work of all its field formations and directorates and assist the government in policy-making in relation to GST, while continuing central excise levy and Customs functions.

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The CBIC will have 21 zones and GST Taxpayer Services Commissionerates.