In its 37th meeting, held in Goa on September 20, the GST Council rejiged the slabs from four to three and reduced the highest tax from 28 per cent to 18 per cent. To make this effective, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Custom (CBIC) and States’ Tax authorities notified the new rates by September 30. “With the increasing awareness of the need to charge only the applicable GST and refund any excess charged to the end consumer accompanied by the evolution of stable IT processes enabling such refunds, consumers can look forward to fairer business practices from B2C businesses,” said MS.Mani, Partner with Deloitte India. Rajat Mohan, Senior Partner with AMRG said that taxes in the hospitality sector have been rationalised from October 1 resulting in savings of 6-10 per cent in consumers’ budget for hotel accommodation services prospectively. “In case of advance bookings made in a pre-change tax period, higher taxes were collected by the sector including online aggregators which now needs to be returned. There are reports that some multi-national chain of hotels and some leading online aggregators have suo motu started refunding the excess collection of taxes, as retention of any amount by businesses would make them guilty under anti-profiteering provisions,” he said.
