Goods and GST Bill passed, Goods and Services Tax - GST

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Dear All,

GST Bill is passed in Rajya Sabha on 03. 08.2016.

A panel under chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian has recommended a revenue-neutral rate of 15-15.5%, with a standard rate of 17-18% be levied on most goods and all services.

But, there has been no agreement yet on rates of various goods and services, which remains a tricky issue. According to the Bill, passed in the Lok Sabha in May 2015, the rates were to be decided by a GST council headed by the central finance minister with state finance ministers as members.

Let us wait.

Thanks.

Posts / Replies

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

The UAE minister was speaking in Dubai on 24 February after a joint press conference with Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that VAT is expected to be introduced at a rate of 5% on 1 January 2018, with some limited exceptions including basic food items, healthcare and education.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

The GST will bring in three developments 1) The system will be more efficient and compliance will be met. Avoidance is going to be difficult because you will be detected at some stage or the other. 2) There will be no cascading effect on tax on tax 3) There are few goods on which the tax might be higher or lower

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

GST doesn’t only stand for Goods and Services Tax, it also stands for Good Sense Triumphs, Chidambaram once said.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Industry body FICCI said it is looking forward to introduction of the much-awaited Goods & Services Tax (GST), saying it would be a very significant step in the field of indirect tax reforms in India.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Introduction of GST would make Indian products competitive in the domestic and international markets.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Biggest benefit of GST is that it will disincentivise tax evasion. If you don’t pay tax on what you sell, you don’t get credit for taxes on your inputs. Also, you will buy only from those who have already paid taxes on what they are supplying. Result: a lot of currently underground transactions will come overground.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Under current tax regime, we have more tax on fewer items; with GST, there will be less tax on more items. Ideally, no good or service should be tax-exempt, as this will break the input tax chain.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

The proposed GST would subsume various central (Excise Duty, Additional Excise Duty, service tax, Countervailing or Additional Customs Duty, Special Additional Duty of Customs, etc.), as well as state-level indirect taxes (VAT/sales tax, purchase tax, entertainment tax, luxury tax, octroi, entry tax, etc).

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council has recently approved the final draft Central GST (C-GST) and Integrated GST (I-GST) laws in a bid to meet the July deadline. The council had earlier cleared the GST Compensation Bill, which requires the Centre to compensate states for any revenue loss for five years after migrating to the new tax system. All these initiatives are taking us closer to the one-nation, one-tax regime, soon to be implemented in India.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

While GST holds immense benefits for businesses small and large, it also requires them to adopt technology and become part of a digital economy. Under the new indirect tax regime, every taxable person needs to furnish their tax details online.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Under the current regime, businesses have the option to file manual challans. However, the new law requires them to comply via the online mode only. Every supply to a registered person needs to be reported through the GSTR-1 form. In addition, GSTR-2 and GSTR-3, which are inward supply details and monthly GST return form, respectively, are required to be filed every month on the GST portal. Also, companies will be required to submit additional returns specific to their specific businesses under the GST regime.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Under the GST Law, a normal taxpayer will be required to furnish three monthly returns and one annual return. There are also provisions for separate returns for taxpayers registered under the composition scheme and those registered as Input Service Distributors.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Returns under GST are to be filed digitally through a common portal at https://www.gst.gov.in. The portal is maintained by GSTN, a non-government, private limited company promoted by the Central and state governments with the specific mandate to build the IT infrastructure and the services required for implementing GST.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Industry is waiting with bated breath for the draft GST rates to be announced. This is because of a variety of reasons. Most of the businesses in India firm up their budgets for the next financial year well before the beginning of the new financial year.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

The Model GST Law would compel taxpayers to pass on the benefits arising out of lowering of GST rate or increase in input tax credits to customers.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Training of staff, changing IT systems, increased compliance costs, etc, are the key incremental expenses incurred/to be incurred by businesses in embracing GST.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

India would be implementing an imperfect GST, wherein crucial sectors like oil & gas, electricity, have been left out of the GST net and they have to continue with the current indirect tax structure that we currently have.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

The compliance prescribed under the GST regime requires every taxable person making a supply to upload transaction wise details to the GST network and input tax credits are available to purchaser only where the tax as reported by the supplier is actually deposited.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

All businesses - manufacturers, distributors, retailers - will have to register on the GST network once the regulation comes to force. All the transactions of a company and thereby the revenues and profits would be captured by the GST system.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Experts point out that there are basically two types of fraud committed by businessmen - first is unilateral, where under invoicing or over invoicing is done only by one of the two people transacting. And then there is bilateral. Some experts said while unilateral frauds would drop drastically, bilateral ones may be difficult to detect even under GST framework.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Goods and Services Tax (GST) is finally expected to be rolled out from July 1, 2017.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

With GST, India will become a seamless unified market without any difference between inter-state or intra-state sales.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

Independent analyst estimates suggest that GST implementation can reduce overall logistics cost by around 30-40 per cent, thereby leading to an overall saving of about 0.3-0.4 per cent of GDP.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

“GST is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the government to remove anomalies in tobacco taxation in India and bring a fair relief to the tobacco farmers without compromising on its tobacco control goals,” said Murali Babu, General Secretary, FAIFA in a statement.

[Ganeshan Kalyani]

“GST is an opportunity to remove tax arbitrage in tobacco taxation and disincentivise illegal and contraband products which have been flooding the Indian market. GST is also an opportunity to remove discrimination among various classes of tobacco farmers. There should not be any discrimination among cigarette, bidi, chewing tobacco farmers,” said Babu.