by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Economy, Markets, News, SMEs
New Delhi : To enable small businesses and start-ups to file their Goods and Services Tax (GST) returns smoothly, Airtel Business on Thursday launched Airtel GST Advantage, a company statement said here.
Airtel Business, is the B2B arm of telecommunications service provider Bharti Airtel.
Launched in partnership with ClearTax, Airtel GST Advantage is being offered free to all existing Airtel Business customers.
“The new GST regime is a landmark reform for the Indian economy and with Airtel GST Advantage, we would like to enable small businesses with free filing of returns, and free and secure data access. Airtel is also the data hosting and connectivity partner for the Goods and Services Network (GSTN),” said Ashok Ganapathy, Director & CEO – Airtel Business.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
It will take time for the economists to figure out whether the fall in the growth rate to 5.7 per cent is the result of the disruption caused by demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST), but most of the common people will see a connection between the two steps and a slowing down of the economy.
For most of them, the GST seems right — like the uniform civil code in another field of national life notwithstanding the teething troubles — but the jury is out on whether demonetisation was necessary if only because 99 per cent of the banned currency has been returned to the government.
Even if this means that those with unearned incomes have chosen to deposit their money in the bank, the question will remain whether the huge disruption caused by demonetisation was required to ferret out these holders of black money, especially when their numbers cannot be too large since most of the dubious earnings is not kept in cash but invested in gold, jewellery and real estate.
The claim that counterfeit currency will be detected by demonetisation has also been disproved by the fact that the amount of such notes that has been turned in is a mere 0.0007 per cent of the total.
If the government’s intention in wiping out 86 per cent of the currency in circulation in one fell swoop was the result of the failure to keep Narendra Modi’s election-eve promise of depositing Rs 15 lakh in each bank account by unearthing black money, it can only be described as a “monumental misjudgement”, as Manmohan Singh called demonetisation.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the government has changed its line from the initial justification of demonetisation as a means of breaking the back of the so-called parallel economy to that of converting the country into a cashless, digital economy.
However, even if this second objective is laudable, the unanswered question remains whether the shock and awe of demonetisation were necessary considering that more than 100 people died while standing in queues before banks and how an unknown number of small businesses suffered. According to one estimate, five million jobs were lost.
The fact that the people in general and the banking system have got back to their feet is a tribute more to their resilience than to the government’s wisdom. But what is undeniable is that they have been put through a wringer, as it were, when the ultimate gain in terms of cleansing the system has been negligible.
It is obvious that the same ends of trapping the hoarders of black money and nudging the country towards the greater use of plastic cards could have been achieved by far more carefully devised ways by experts which would not have caused the kind of turmoil set off by the sudden sweeping of the economy by the broom of demonetisation.
The utility of this reckless intervention is all the more doubtful since the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) claim that demonetisation paid it political dividends is not foolproof.
For instance, the party’s record in winning elections in 2017 is 3-2 considering that it lost in Punjab and came second in Goa and Manipur while winning in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
It is another matter that the BJP negated the outcomes in Goa and Manipur by some adroit manoeuvres in horse-trading in order to secure the allegiance of MLAs susceptible to enticements. But the original score line showed that demonetisation was not a booster for the BJP.
It is also unclear to what extent the dramatic step of November 8 last year has been a damper for terrorism and Maoism since Kashmir remains on the boil while the decline in the incidents of Maoist outrages from 155 in 2014 to 118 in 2015 to 69 in 2016 can be ascribed to a natural process caused by the gearing up of the official machinery and the realisation among the insurgents about the futility of their cause. Demonetisation, therefore, can hardly be advanced as a reason.
The worry for the government at present will be about the fall in the growth rate as it will rob the country of its claim of being the fastest-growing economy and accentuate the phenomenon of jobless growth.
It is the failure to rev up the employment scene which is making the government turn to the customary measures of wooing vote banks by expanding the ambit of the creamy layer for the backward castes and firming up the BJP’s electoral tactic of enticing the non-Yadav backward castes to its side through a sub-categorization of these groups. But in the ultimate analysis, only a buoyant economy can help the ruling party’s political fortunes.
If demonetisation has put paid to such hopes in the near future — although the new Niti Aayog vice-chairman, Rajiv Kumar, has called a link between the falling growth rate and demonetisation “spurious” — the government will have only itself to blame.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, News, Politics
New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday asked taxmen to work towards registering even relatively small traders — with a turnover of below Rs 20 lakh — under the Goods and Service Tax (GST) system.
He also said that the government was working towards creation of an environment which shatters the confidence of the corrupt and instills confidence and trust among the honest taxpayer.
“In order to enable all traders to take maximum benefit of GST, we should work towards ensuring that all traders, including even those with a turnover below Rs 20 lakh, should register with the GST system,” he said while addressing the tax administrators of the Centre and states at a two-day ‘Rajasva Gyan Sangam’ organised here.
He asked the officers to make efforts in this regard by designing a system for this category.
Currently, traders with annual turnover of below Rs 20 lakh turnover need not register under GST as they are exempt from paying any indirect taxes.
More than 17 lakh new traders have been brought into the indirect tax system within two months, Modi said adding that GST besides economic integration helps in bringing transparency in the system.
The Prime Minister also asked officers to use data analytical tools to proactively track and determine undeclared income and wealth.
In this regard, he also suggested complete reworking of human resource management in the tax departments to strengthen the data analytics and investigation wing.
“Human interface must be kept to a minimum in the tax administration’s dealings. A push is to be given to ‘e-assessment’ and anonymity of proceedings using technology, so that vested interests do not impede the due course of law,” Modi said.
He further asserted that the honest cannot continue to pay the price for the misdeeds of the dishonest.
In this regard, he mentioned steps taken by the government, such as demonetisation and implementation of stringent laws against black money and benami property.
He said that though efforts to increase tax revenue are made by officers each year, the estimated amounts of tax that should accrue to the system, are often not realised.
“The Prime Minister asked officers to come up with a time-bound solution to ‘tax raised and not realised’,” a statement cited Modi as having said.
Modi also expressed his dismay at the huge pendency of tax-related cases in adjudication and appeal.
He said big sums of money locked up in these cases could have been used for the welfare of the poor and asked officers to come up with an action plan during the two-day ‘Rajasva Gyan Sangam’ to eliminate pendency.
Exhorting the officers to improve their work-culture, to incorporate both a “sense of urgency” and “measurability” in their performance, he asked them to fix clear targets to improve the country’s tax administration by 2022, the 75th anniversary of independence.
The two-day ‘Rajasva Gyan Sangam’ would come up with concrete ideas to improve the tax administration, he hoped.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, Markets, News, Politics
Manish Sisodia
New Delhi : Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Tuesday said that his government will soon form Goods and Services Tax (GST) committees in every market of the national capital to resolve tax-related problems being faced by traders.
Addressing the media, Sisodia said the decision to form the committees was taken at a Cabinet meeting earlier in the day. Each committee will comprise 12 to 15 traders.
The Deputy Chief Minister said that inputs from these committees would be taken before every GST Council meeting, which would help the government better understand traders’ problems and also frame policies accordingly.
“I’ve been meeting businessmen in small and big markets of Delhi and they still have a lot of GST-related confusion. They told me that the existing helpline numbers and centres are able to solve their doubts but not the problems they face,” he said.
Sisodia said that the work for formation of committees was already underway and that the same would be completed in about a fortnight.
He said that the GST committees were being made to have a two-way communication channel, and urged all Delhi traders to be a part of the committees and discuss their issues with an open mind.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Governance, Large Enterprise, Media, News
New Delhi : The government on Wednesday clarified that selling of space for advertisements in print media would attract 5 and 18 per cent Goods and Services Tax (GST), depending on the terms of the contract between the newspaper, advertisement agency and the client.
If the advertisement agency works on principal-to-principal basis, that is, buys space from the newspaper and sells such space for advertisement to clients on its own account, that is, as a principal, it would be liable to pay GST at the rate of 5 per cent on the full amount charged by advertisement agency from the client, the Finance Ministry said in a statement.
For example, if a newspaper sells a unit of space worth Rs 100 to an advertisement agency for Rs 85 (after a trade discount of Rs 15) and the advertisement agency sells the same unit of space to client at Rs 100, then the newspaper would be liable to pay GST at the rate of 5 per cent on Rs 85 (i.e. Rs 4.25) and the advertisement agency would be liable to pay GST on Rs 100 (i.e. Rs 5) and may utilise input tax credit (ITC) of Rs 4.25.
On the other hand, if the advertisement agency sells space for advertisement as an agent of the newspaper on commission basis, it would be liable to pay GST at the rate of 18 per cent on the sale commission it receives from the newspaper. ITC of GST paid on such sale commission would be available to newspaper, the statement said.
So, for example, if an advertisement agency sells unit of space to the client not on its own account but on account of newspaper for Rs 100 and receives commission of Rs 15 for such sale from the newspaper.
In such a case, the advertisement agency shall be liable to pay GST at the rate of 18 per cent on the sales commission of Rs 15 (i.e Rs 2.7), ITC of which shall be available to newspaper for payment of GST at the rate of 5 per cent on Rs 100 (value of space for advertisement sold by the newspaper).
However, if the advertisement agency supplies any service other than selling of space for advertisement, such as designing or drafting the advertisement and such supply is not a part of any composite supply, the same would be liable to tax at the rate of 18 per cent.
If such supplies are part of any composite supply, the rate applicable for the principal supply shall apply, it said.
—IANS
