New structure divides state into 3 districts
Special Correspondent
Panaji: The government has announced a major restructuring of its tax administration with the creation of a dedicated goods and service tax-focused large taxpayer unit (LTU), which will be effective from April 1, 2026.
The new LTU replaces the earlier framework and marks a shift from legacy value added tax-based administration to a model, which is anchored entirely under the Goa GST Act, 2017.
The unit will function as a single-window jurisdiction for high-revenue taxpayers across the state’s GST system. Goa, under the revised structure, will be administratively divided into three districts — North Goa, South Goa and the newly-formed Kushavati — with eight ward offices handling regular taxpayers.
LTU, over and above, will exercise exclusive jurisdiction over eligible large taxpayers across all three districts.
Businesses will be shifted to LTU if the taxpayers discharge cumulative SGST liability exceeding Rs 1.5 crore in a financial year through the electronic cash ledger, or if they are engaged in supplying ‘specified actionable claims’, including sectors such as casinos, online gaming, etc. Notably, entities in this category will fall under LTU irrespective of turnover.
For shifting registered taxable persons to LTU, upon obtaining new GST registration, the registered taxable person shall be assigned to any of the eight ward offices in the state and no new GST registration shall be directly assigned to LTU.
Upon close of every financial year on March 31, within next 90 days all such registered taxable persons fulfilling any one of the criterion shall be shifted from the existing ward office to LTU. For any technical reasons if the shifting of such taxpayer to LTU is delayed, the existing ward office shall continue to exercise jurisdiction over such registered taxable person till the actual shifting of the taxpayer in back-office portal is effected.
A registered taxable person once shifted under jurisdiction of LTU shall continue to be under the ambit irrespective of whether such taxpayer continues to fulfil the given criteria for subsequent financial years, till the proper officer from LTU passes an order removing such registered taxable person out of LTU and placing under the jurisdiction of local ward office.
