One month of GST: Doing business more complicated than ever

Ambiguous rules, multi-rate sales tax have left firms confused on how to price their products

Tax crash course
New Delhi has launched an active outreach programme to educate companies and explain different provisions of the new tax. The exercise has also become a crash course for tax officials in the anomalies of the new tax structure.
Officials have discovered that holiday tour operators are charging the new tax not only for services provided in India but also for those offered abroad.
While vegetable seeds remain tax exempt, paddy, cereal and corn seeds now attract 5 per cent tax. This has hit sales at companies such as Monsanto, whose local seed merchants have no experience of paying tax.
"Our sales are getting hammered at a time when they would normally be booming," Arindam Lahiri, Monsanto's taxation lead in Asia & Africa, told Reuters. "This anomaly needs to be fixed urgently."
Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia, overseeing the GST rollout, tweeted this week that nearly 8 million businesses were enrolled to pay the tax and the transition "is going on smoothly". He did not respond to a request for comment.
But for some companies, it has been anything but smooth...
(READ MORE)

Congress demands roll back of 5% GST on LPG cylinder

LPG has been put in 5% GST slab, earlier a 2 to 4% VAT was imposed on LPG in some states

 

The Congress on Tuesday demanded that the five per cent Goods and Services Tax (GST) levied on domestic LPG cylinder be removed as it was burdening the poor.

"The price of domestic LPG cylinder has gone up by Rs 32 in parts of the country after the GST became effective. This is affecting common people, the poor especially. We demand that the GST on domestic LPG cylinder be removed immediately," senior AICC spokesperson Ajay Maken told reporters here.

LPG has been put in the five per cent GST slab. Earlier a two to four per cent VAT was imposed on LPG in some states.(Economy news)

Maken accused the government of not passing on the benefits of drop in global crude oil prices to people of the country.

"The government is making profits to the tune of Rs 3 lakh crore every year by not slashing prices of fuel here. On the one hand, it is making profits and on the other, it is burdening the poor by imposing GST on the LPG cylinder," Maken added.

He claimed food and beverages, helmets, hair oil, tooth paste, tea, coffee, butter, curd, cement and mineral water are some of the items prices of which have shot up, notwithstanding the government's assurance that their rates will drop once the GST is in force.

Maken also described the GST as 'Gayi Savings Tumhari' (your savings have vanished).

The GST came into force on July 1.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)