Blogs

Introduction and background

In August 2018, the State of Kerala faced a devastating flood due to high rainfall which was the worst flood in nearly a century. There was huge loss to the assets, revenue of the State. As a result, the State of Kerala proposed for levy of additional cess in GST which was approved by the GST council in its 32^nd Council meeting held on 10^th January 2019. The council approved the proposal of State of Kerala to mobilise the revenue through levy of additional cess...

On the introduction of GST, the credit of taxes under the existing law, predominantly Central Excise, Service Tax and Value Added Tax, was allowed to be carry forwarded vide the transitional provision either as Central Goods and Service Tax (CGST) or State Goods and Service Tax (SGST) as the case may be accordingly taxpayers did carry forwarded the credit by filing transactional credit by filing Form TRAN -01. The common observation of the department during the transitional credit...

Implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) was one of the long awaited fiscal reform and due to various reasons it was only hanging around and could not circumvent the obstacles for substantially long period of time so much so that people started saying that the reform may not see a light of the day. However, all that is history now and we are lucky to witness the eventual implementation of this tax reform and today we stand at a timeline of 200 days post GST implementation. At this...

BACKGROUND:  

Much expected and game changing indirect tax law was introduced in the form of GST with effect from 1st July 2017. This financial is unique from Indirect Taxes perspective as the erstwhile indirect taxes such as service tax, central excise and VAT were prevalent for the first quarter i.e. April 2017 to June 2017 and later GST is in place for the remaining three quarters. Therefore, as we come close to the end of the financial year 2017-18, it is important to revisit and...

Game changing GST law has brought-in lot of practical difficulties for a tax payer. Many of these difficulties are being addressed by the government which is a positive sign. One major issue which is being faced by the tax payer now is on compliance with anti-profiteering provisions. It is also a fact that implementation of anti-profiteering provisions was never been easy in any of the countries wherein GST system was introduced in the past. Even in our country it may not be a smooth sailing...

The success of GST would largely depend on how the resistance to change which is inbuilt in humans is dissipated. The ethical needs and ground realities of each of the stakeholders needs to be considered when sharing the information on GST. The knowledge level and possible concerns of that sector should be met in the awareness/ training.1   

The stakeholders in GST regime are obviously the tax compliant assessees, errant (not compliant assessees - registered or not), GST officers at...

Advantages and Dis-advantages of GST

Implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) was one of the long awaited fiscal reform and due to various reasons it was only hanging around and could not circumvent the obstacles for substantially long period of time so much so that people started saying that the reform may not see a light of the day. However, all that is history now and we are lucky to witness the eventual implementation of this tax reform and today we stand at a timeline of 200...

Transitional provisions in GST law provides the tax treatment for transitional transactions and issues arising thereof. One of the key transitional issues is whether input tax credit can be availed in respect of stocks lying with the business on the appointed day (i.e. 01.07.2017). This issue does not bother much to the manufacturers since they were availing the input tax credit of Central Excise and local VAT in their returns filed and were also utlizing the same against the output tax...

Transitional provisions have been prescribed in the GST law which provides tax treatment for transitional matters like spill over transactions, transitional credits etc. It allows existing taxpayers to transfer the input tax credit available as closing balance in the existing tax returns to the GST returns. Therefore, assesses were able to transfer the closing balance of credit in respect of Central Excise duty, Service Tax, Local VAT etc. as the opening credit balance in the GST returns....

1. Availability of Transitional credit for Traders: 

It is seen that based on the concerns raised by various exporters, government has immediately acted upon and created a mechanism in GST portal enabling exporters to claim refund of the taxes paid. This step has been widely appreciated and exporters are at ease as their issue of working capital has been now resolved. 

We urge government to immediately address the similar issue in case of traders wherein as per transitional...