With Goods and Services Tax (GST) officers under pressure to exceed the Rs 1-trillion collection mark per month, industry has faced a barrage of recovery notices and summons issued over the last one month across sectors, according to company executives. Industry bodies have claimed harassment by field officers, blocking of input tax credit, cancellation of GST registration, threats of arrest and steep penalties, impacting their working capital and operations. Company executives pointed at an atmosphere of apprehension and fear due to such notices and summons.
There could be a strong incentive for tax payers to avoid the higher tax burden.
GST Council extends anti-profiteering authority's tenure, sends rate cut on EVs to fitment panel and also extended the date for filing annual returns under the GST by two months to August 30.
While the Centre is criticised for not cutting excise duty on petroleum products, it is the states which gain more from the rise in their prices
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The GST Bill, introduced in Parliament in 2010, is being vetted by the Standing Committee on Finance. Now, the states and the Centre would together finalise the draft and bring it back to Parliament.
BPCL is a high revenue-earning public-sector undertaking (PSU) and plans to privatise it are completely off the table, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Tuesday after assuming charge of the ministry for the second time. "Why would we divest ourselves of highly successful Maharatnas like BPCL," Puri said, arguing the Centre was not in favour of divesting its stake in oil PSUs.
From connectivity woes to infrastructure advancements and the startup boom, there is a gulf between claims and reality in India's economic landscape, points out Devangshu Datta.
Pulse oximeters, hand sanitisers, temperature check equipment and ambulances too will attract lower 5 per cent tax.
Amid an outcry over record high petrol and diesel prices, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday said the Centre and state governments will have to together work out a mechanism to bring retail rates to reasonable levels.
Here's everything you need to know about the Goods and Services Tax Bill.
With less than five months left for the report of the Fifteenth Finance Commission to be submitted, its chairman N K Singh said the report will have fiscal road map for states, depending on their current situation.
The Centre is against giving any shock in the first year of the rollout by bringing in new services.
BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi on Wednesday said it is not possible to bring petrol and diesel under the GST regime for the next eight to 10 years as it would cause an annual revenue loss of Rs 2 lakh crore to all states. Centre and states collectively collect over Rs 5 lakh crore tax on petroleum products, Modi told the Rajya Sabha while participating in a discussion on the Finance Bill 2021. The statement assumes significance in view of the rise in petrol price for the past over one year which even touched Rs 100 per litre in some states. In the first reduction in rates in over a year, petrol price on Wednesday was cut by 18 paise per litre and diesel by 17 paise a litre as international oil prices tumbled to the lowest since early February.
'I found it unbelievable that L&T said 45,000 jobs were waiting to be filled because of unavailability of suitable skillsets.' 'So, when the Opposition sweepingly says there are no jobs, I'm sorry... I'm not saying it's raining jobs, but there are jobs. The (skill) gap has to be bridged.'
The Central government will borrow up to Rs 1.1 lakh crore on behalf of the states to bridge the shortfall in GST collections, the finance ministry said on Thursday. A slowdown in the economy since last fiscal has resulted in a drop in the Goods and Services Tax (GST) collections, upsetting the budgets of states which had given up their right to levy local taxes such as sales tax or VAT when GST was introduced in July 2017. To make up for the shortfall, borrowing from the market was proposed.
Inching towards rolling out of GST, the GST Council on Saturday approved a law to compensate states for any loss of revenue from the implementation of the new national sales tax but deferred approval for enabling laws to next meeting.
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The GST will subsume most of the indirect taxes like excise duty and service tax
If you think that revenue officials are going berserk, acting on their own, while the government chants the mantra of 'ease of doing business', you would be wrong. These moves appear to have full official backing, points out Debashis Basu.
Is the curated and limited data put out by the central government sufficient enough to pass a judgement on the trend in GST collections, particularly that of the Centre?
The instruction is that audit of large units be completed within seven working days, of medium units in five working days and of small ones in three.
It is far from clear that this GST will have the silver bullet effect that the "pure" GST would have provided, says Mihir S Sharma.
Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan's wish to levy indirect tax on petrol unlikely to be taken up
'Otherwise, how is the government going to make more revenue?' 'The most important thing the GST does is to transfer money from the household consumers who are the most productive users of capital to the most unproductive users of capital, namely the government.'
The CAG audit and other data suggests it could be far from the efficient new alternative that was once conceptualised. A conclusive review remains elusive till the government begins to release more granular and comparable data on the complex backend of GST to a deeper scrutiny, by researchers, auditors and the public.
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.
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, chaired by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, will likely consider on Saturday a GST rate cut for Covid-19 relief essentials and drugs for treating the black fungus disease and might leave the vaccines untouched. The meeting is being held following a report submitted by a Group of Ministers (GoM) to the GST Council on Monday. The GoM, set up by the Council on May 28, was mandated to look at tax exemption and concessions on various Covid items including vaccines, drugs, and equipment.
The revenue collection in the same month a year ago stood at Rs 94,442 crore.
'We have now drastically simplified it, primarily to two rates in long-term capital gains: 20% and the applicable rates. Similarly, in short-term capital gains.' 'For listed shares, there is a slight increase, but for unlisted shares, where indexation benefits are removed, there is a reduction in rates, benefiting unlisted companies, venture capital firms, etc.' 'Similarly, in real estate, wherever returns are higher, the new structure is beneficial. In very few cases, returns are lower, and those are more of an exception.'
GST Council has also reached consensus on the definition of revenue to compensate states for revenue loss
As Centre cedes power to states in indirect tax, it wants to all ystaffers' worry of little work.
The panel suggested inclusion of alcohol and petroleum products in GST, as is being demanded by the Congress.
With 7 per cent economic growth, India is not creating enough jobs as reflected by the number of applicants for vacant posts in some states, Reserve Bank's former governor Raghuram Rajan said and suggested the government needs to focus on promoting labour-intensive industries to generate employment. Rajan further said some Indians, especially those at upper level, are comfortable and have high incomes, but consumption growth from the lower half of the country has still not recovered to pre-pandemic level.
The central government is likely to exceed the budgeted tax collection target of Rs 22.2 trillion for the current fiscal year, led by better indirect tax mop-up, compliance measures, and recovery in most sectors following the second wave of the Covid pandemic. Personal income and corporate tax collections (net of refunds) grew 74 per cent to Rs 5.70 trillion in the first half of the current financial year, driven mainly by advance tax and TDS payments. The target for the current fiscal year is Rs 11.08 trillion; higher taxes are paid usually towards the end of a fiscal year.
GST rates would depend upon whether the commodity is used by a rich person or a common man
Jaitley further said the country would eventually move to a two-tier GST, however, this depends on the revenue position of the government.
Besides urging the Centre for extension of loan moratorium, the hotel and travel industries have also demanded deferment of GST and advance tax payments and waiver of fees for all forthcoming licences and permits.
Mop up grows 10% y-o-y at Rs 1.05 trillion, almost equal to levels in February before a nationwide lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic
The Centre is looking to convene a meeting of the all-powerful Goods and Service Tax Council in early January. The meeting is likely to focus on rectifying the inverted duty structure for a few more items and will also serve as a platform for pre-Budget discussions between Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and state finance ministers, Business Standard has learnt. "The current Winter Session of Parliament ends on December 23, followed by the Christmas-New Year period. "After that we would like to have a meeting of the GST Council, depending on whether there can be a quorum," a top government official said.
The shift from 'one country, one tax' to four tax rates could dilute possible gains on GDP, warns T N Ninan.
