The Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) has released an extensive FAQs detailing taxability of e-commerce players and taxi aggregators under the new system. The (FAQ) booklet consists of 268-page frequently asked questions. It has been released by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who answered over 500 questions on 24 topics, including scope, valuation, registration, time of supply, seizure, refunds, payment and arrest.
The details for the e-commerce players and the taxi aggregators such as Ola has been mentioned and the authority have been directed to register under GST and there will be no threshold exemption for them.
Also, prominent e-commerce players such as Flipkart and Amazon will have to go through registration under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime irrespective of the of supply valuation estimated by them. However, other companies such as Titan, which sells jewels and watches through its own website won’t come under e-commerce operation.
As per the FAQs based on the Model GST law,”A person providing any information or any other services incidental to or in connection with such supply of goods and services through electronic platform would be considered as an operator. A person supplying goods/services on his own account, however, would not be considered as an operator.”
Explaining the penal provisions, the FAQ booklet reveals, “the penalty shall be extended up to five years of jail with a fine if the tax evaded is more than Rs 2.5 crore, three years if tax evaded is between Rs 50 lakh and 2.5 crore and one year if it is between Rs 25-50 lakh. It further said all offences where the evasion of tax exceeds Rs 2.5 crore shall be cognisable and non-bailable.”
Regarding GSTN, over which BJP MP Subramanian Swamy has expressed misgivings, the FAQ said: “GSTN in its current form was created after taking approval of the empowered committee of state finance ministers and the Union government after due deliberations over a long period of time.”
On the role of Infosys in GSTN, it said the IT company has been kept as a “single managed service provider” for building the IT infrastructure for GST, design development, deployment of GST system, including tools, application software. The company will have to maintain it for five years.
Read / Download Full FAQs on GST by CBEC:
