Indirect Tax
Recent changes in Indirect Tax
Indirect taxes are taxes that are assessed by Government on goods and services, rather than on individualities or businesses directly. These taxes are collected by businesses from consumer when they buy goods or services, and also remitted to the government. Indirect taxes are often referred to as consumption taxes because they are based on consumption of goods and services rather than income or wealth. Indirect taxes can take many forms, including sales taxes, value-added taxes (VAT), excise taxes, and tariffs.
During the Union Budget of 2023 “Amrit Kaal”, It was the very first time when the indirect tax proposals were presented before the direct tax proposals. In the Proposal of indirect tax Presented in the Union Budget of 2023 there were 4 major changes which caught the attention of the citizens.
Following are the 4 major changes:
Customs Perspective: In the Union Budget, to promote the ‘Make in India’ campaign and give to a boost to domestic manufacturing and enhance exports, the government and our FM has proposed few changes in the rate of import duties. The import duties on electric chimneys and cigarettes will now be more expensive, while on the other hand import of gold, silver, platinum, coin, etc., will be cheaper. Also, some exemption has been proposed towards goods or machinery used for manufacturing of lithium-ion battery.
GST Returns To Be Filed Within Three Years: GSTR 1, GSTR 3B and GSTR 9and GSTR 9C would now be restricted for filing, post expiry of three years from the due date of filing of the relevant GST return. Until now, there was no threshold on time for filing GST return and any taxpayer could file belated returns along with interest and late fees. However, going forward, in future these dates have been locked so as to have clarity on the timelines for litigation.
Widening of Scope of OIDAR: The Online Information and Database Access and Retrieval (OIDAR) services were brought under the tax bracket in the service tax regime and subsequently, in the GST regime. However, due to some exceptions in OIDAR and non-taxable online recipient, multiple services were escaping tax. In order to remove those exceptions, the Budget proposes to amend both the definitions and make OIDAR a wider segment for taxability purpose.
Taxability of High Sea Sales and Out-And-Out Sales: Out-and-out sales and high-sea sales were inserted in schedule III of the CGST Act, 2017 with effect from Feb. 1, 2019. However, the GST authorities were demanding GST from July 1, 2017 to Jan. 31, 2019. So to clarify this ambiguity and confusion, the budget has stated that such insertion will be with retrospective effect from July 1, 2017. This is a relief for taxpayers who are undergoing a litigation on these aspects. However, if the taxpayer has already paid the taxes for such period on the specified sales, the Budget has clearly specified that no refund of such tax can be claimed.
Although there are other changes as well but from Tax perspective the above 4 are major changes.