Kolkata|
During a day day-long Seminar on Service Tax organized by The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry and graced by S. K. Panda, IRS, Chief Commissioner of Service Tax, Kolkata Zone, towards the end of inaugural session T B Chatterjee, Chairperson, Indirect Tax Committee, The Bengal Chamber & Chief Corporate Officer, Legal & Corporate Affairs, DIC India Ltd. , speaking on ‘Key trends in indirect tax as precursor to GSTC’ sprung this idea upon the gathered. It all started when he queried “Does anybody know the worth of Wal-Mart? After establishing albeit wrongfully that its one-fourth of India’s GDP (Actual figures – Wal-Mart’s net worth: $144.7 billion India’s GDP: close to Rs two T or $ 29.79 billion), he mentioned that the retail behemoth has no warehousing but direct company-distributor touch-point. If one follows that system then one can transfer goods with only 3 central warehouses in the entire country, thus saving on tax on inter-state good transfer. “GSTC is a tool to reduce tax. To save tax talk to business consultants – logistic, marketing and procurement team and not the taxation head. They will cut costs to help save tax; taxation department is there only to compute”, he added.
Earlier in his technical he had said that no separate central and state GSTC will be levied for inter-state transfer of goods or funds but is now replaced by IGST. The taxation system has been so modified that it will be upon supplier and receiver to keep tab on each transaction between them else they will not be able to file for tax. The system is water-tight that “government can go to sleep. The headache is now with them”, said, BCCI Chairperson of ITC. He also went on to say “There has been a shift in taxation outlook from being a manufacturing-based tax to a consumption-based tax as there are few manufacturing pockets but consumers all pan-country. Because of this WB can expect a 80% increment in its collections from tax”.
The rest of the seminar comprising six more sessions delved in depth on new amendments under Finance Act 2016, recent and important Court judgments, Finance Act 2016Cenvat Credit & reverse charge, exemptions, negative list & rules for Place of Provision of Services, Service Tax on Real Estate Transactions and Works Contract and other sectional issues in Service Tax including Mining, IT& Software, Leasing, Restaurants, Hotels, Banking & Finance, Intellectual Property, Intermediaries etc.
