Businesses across the country may soon be required to issue electronic invoices, or e-invoices, directly to consumers for the sale of goods and services. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, in its forthcoming meeting on Monday, is expected to discuss extending the e-invoicing mandate to cover business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions. Currently, e-invoicing is compulsory for businesses with a turnover of Rs 5 crore and above, but only for their business-to-business (B2B) transactions.
At a meeting of the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers, the Centre's plan to bring petroleum goods under GST regime was opposed.
'We are not asking for incentives, but at least taxation can be aligned such that the rupee tax on consumers remains the same.'
Petrol price can go down to Rs 75 a litre across the country if brought under the ambit of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), but there is a lack of political will, which is keeping Indian oil product prices at one of the highest in the world, economists at SBI said on Thursday.
In the current financial year, the Centre released nearly Rs 1 lakh crore compensation to the states till September.
While Congress and the states ruled by non-NDA parties pushed for the Centre meeting its statutory obligation of covering the deficit, the Union government cited a legal opinion to say it had no such obligation if there was a shortfall in tax collections. The Centre as well as BJP-JD-U-ruled Bihar were of the opinion that the states should borrow to make up for the shortfall in the tax revenues that have been compounded by the COVID-19 crisis, sources said.
GST will lead to consolidation of multiple indirect taxes
Penning a Facebook post on the second anniversary of GST rollout, Jaitley said as many as 20 states are already showing more than a 14 per cent increase in their revenues and do not require the Centre to compensate them for revenue loss arising out of GST implementation.
Under the GST regime, most manufactured goods will turn cheaper.
Net direct tax collection in the April-June quarter of the current fiscal rose by 41 per cent to Rs 3,54,569.74 crore, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary informed the Lok Sabha. During the April-June period of 2021-22, the government had collected a net direct tax of Rs 2,50,881.08 crore. At the same time, net indirect tax collection including Goods and Services Tax (GST) and custom duty increased by 9.4 per cent to Rs 3,44,056 crore as against Rs 3,14,476 crore in the first quarter of the previous fiscal, he said in a written reply.
'The professional or the freelancer needs to pay taxes from his pocket first and then wait for payments from his clients.'
The Budget should use the extra RBI surplus to better effect, suggests A K Bhattacharya.
If the new regime is introduced in 2017, the govt may lose out on cess, surcharge
Since the present law threatens to unleash an avalanche of litigation over a period of time, it makes sense to replace it with a simpler law and build complexities as more experience is gained, says T N C Rajagopalan.
Rationalisation of rates will be taken up for smaller items that do not have major revenue implications but are commonly consumed at the GST Council meet on Saturday
The time the companies have to get ready for GST is 6 to 12 months.
GST compensation law allows for imposition of cess on certain luxury goods like tobacco, high-end cars and aereated drinks to create a corpus for compensating states for any loss of revenue in the first five years
'Because of the COVID-19 pandemic situation today, the revenues of the states have gone down, the GST money is not coming and all the states combined have lost more than Rs 365,000 crore in revenue.' 'To make it worse, the Government of India is not compensating us for the shortfall, which it must as per its Constitutional obligations.'
'A broad-based revival of private sector investment was likely in 2018-19 after businesses had successfully made the switch to the GST.'
An area of worry relates to simplification of the refund procedure where the inverted duty structure prevails
The shutdown has been complete in not only major cities like Kohima, Dimapur and Mokokchung, but even smaller towns such as Tuli, Jalukie, Pfutsero, CNCCI president Khekugha Muru told PTI.
The FAQ also clarified that companies, including Titan, which supplies watches and jewels through their own websites will not be considered as e-commerce operators
The Rajya Sabha on Wednesday approved the biggest tax reform since Independence.
Steep taxes on petrol and diesel add to the cost of economic activity and reduce the Indian economy's competitiveness. The two fuels must be brought under GST's purview, suggests former IAS officer Ajay Shankar.
The GST Council, headed by Jaitley and comprising representatives of all the states, is scheduled to meet in Srinagar on May 18-19 to finalise tax rates on different goods and services after unifying at least 10 indirect taxes into the Goods and Services Tax.
The Centre's revenue from GST registered a decline of 10 per cent in 2017-18 compared to revenue of subsumed taxes in 2016-17.
Proposals from the Centre's side include raising the 5 per cent slab to anywhere between 6 and 8 per cent, and doing away with the 12 per cent slab. A few states may oppose such a move because it involves hiking tax on items consumed by the poor. They have instead proposed raising the 18 per cent slab.
Thomas Isaac has been in and out of the national news in his role as Kerala's finance minister since 2018 for various path-breaking tax initiatives. But it is 2020 that he has become more prominent, principally in the GST council.
A government report revealed that fake companies floated with fake addresses, issued fake GST invoices and generated fake e-way bills, with fake vehicle registration details without supplying any goods causing huge loss to the exchequer.
Companies feel higher rates in India would not be justified.
The govt will have to clear hurdles to push GST by March 2015.
The demand for extension of the GST cess regime among others was made by several state finance ministers at a pre-budget consultation called by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in New Delhi. Besides, many states also demanded raising the share of the Union government in the Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS). Currently, the central government and state government share in some CSS is 60:40 while in others it is 75:25.
The Congress, however, said it wanted to see the final print on the wording of the dispute resolution mechanism before committing its support to the Bill
Small and medium enterprises had complained of tedious compliance burden under the Goods and Services Tax
GST will also make our exports more competitive and also provide a level playing field to domestic industry to compete with imports, the President said.
No mention of cab aggregators in GST bills
If other states follow suit, it is going to become difficult for the GST Council to decide on the next stage of reforms.
Amendments to RBI Act likely soon
The previous United Progressive Alliance government had undertaken some decisions, like introduction of retrospective tax amendments and GAAR, which had dented investor sentiments.
The gross tax revenues have touched 65 per cent of the Budget estimates at Rs 17.81 lakh crore during the first eight months of the current fiscal till November, propelled by corporate and personal income tax mop-up, according to the Economic Survey 2022-23 presented in Parliament on Tuesday. The survey, authored by Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran, said the 'substantial reforms' in India's taxation ecosystem post-2014 and policy reforms have removed the distortionary incentives from the economy. Reforms like GST, reduction in corporate taxes, exemption of sovereign wealth funds and pension funds from taxes, and removing Dividend Distribution tax have reduced the tax burden on individuals and businesses.
