Q 2. Why are place of supply provisions different in respect of goods and services?
Ans. Goods being tangible do not pose any significant problems for determination of their place of consumption. Services being intangible pose problems w.r.t determination of place of supply mainly due to following factors:
(i) The manner of delivery of service could be altered easily. For example telecom service could change from mostly post-paid to mostly pre-paid; billing address could be changed, billers address could be changed, repair or maintenance of software could be changed from onsite to online; banking services were earlier required customer to go to the bank, now the customer could avail service from anywhere;
(ii) Service provider, service receiver and the service provided may not be ascertainable or may easily be suppressed as nothing tangible moves and there would hardly be a trail;
(iii) For supplying a service, a fixed location of service provider is not mandatory and even the service recipient may receive service while on the move. The location of billing could be changed overnight;
(iv) Sometime the same element may flow to more than one location, for example, construction or other services in respect of a railway line, a national highway or a bridge on a river which originate in one state and end in the other state. Similarly a copy right for distribution and exhibition of film could be assigned for many states in single transaction or an advertisement or a programme is broadcasted across the country at the same time. An airline may issue seasonal tickets, containing say 10 leafs which could be used for travel between any two location in the country. The card issued by Delhi metro could be used by a person located in Noida, or Delhi or Faridabad, without the Delhi metro being able to distinguish the location or journeys at the time of receipt of payment;
(v) Services are continuously evolving and would thus continue to pose newer challenges. For example 15-20 years back no one could have thought of DTH, online information, online banking, online booking of tickets, internet, mobile telecommunication etc.
