Hyderabad: The Telangana state government has been pitching for a clause in the GST Act to ensure that the benefit of lower taxes is passed on to consumers.
Apart from this, the state government will ask the Centre to set up a National GST Appel-late Tribunal to resolve tax-related disputes between all the stakeholders without any delay.
The transition of traders from VAT to GST is going on at a brisk pace in the state. The linking of local traders with national GST networks is expected to be completed by April to enable GST rollout from July 1, as planned by the Centre.
Senior officials of the commercial taxes department have submitted a report to finance minister Etela Rajender on the issues to be taken up in the GST Council. The report noted that the benefit of taxes that come down due to GST should be passed on to the consumers.
It also suggested that there should be a mechanism like Appellate Tribunal to examine whether input tax credits availed by any registered taxable person, or the reduction in the price on account of any reduction in the tax rate have actually resulted in a commensurate reduction in the price of goods and/or services supplied by him.
For instance, if a manufacturer pays Rs 500 GST on final product and claims Rs 350 input credit later (tax he paid on inputs to make final product) from the government, the net tax paid is only Rs 150 and this deducted Rs 350, should be passed on to the consumers.
“At present, nearly 70 per cent of goods attract average tax of about 27 per cent. In many cases, it is 30-32 per cent. This rate is expected to come down to less than 25 per cent, after GST comes into force. This tax reduction has to be passed on to the consumers. We should not allow profiteering by manufacturers on account of this. The same will be taken up with the Centre,” an state commercial tax official said.
