CAIT asks government to exempt small e-commerce sellers from GST registration

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Jan 18, 2022

The Confederation of All India Traders has urged the government to exempt businesses retailing goods through e-commerce platforms from goods and service tax registration, believing this will hamper digital growth. 

CAIT made an appeal to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asking her to approach the GST Council to call for GST registration exemption for small-scale e-commerce sellers, Indo-Asian News Service reported. CAIT proposed that small online sellers instead could register their Aadhar number, bank details, or other similar other information.
 
“Under the GST Act, a seller who wishes to sell products in e-commerce is invariably required to obtain a GST number,” said CAIT’s national president, B C Bhartia, and secretary general, Praveen Khandwlwal, in a joint statement, Indo-Asian News Service reported. “Any seller who does not have a GST number is not allowed to sell products on any e-commerce portal. This provision of the act is barring lakhs of traders across the country from using e-commerce to sell their products.”

The traders’ body asserted that mandating small online sellers register for GST is against the Union Government’s ‘Digital India’ campaign which aims to boost the domestic e-commerce market. Smaller sellers being put off going online will just mean more business for large, foreign owned e-commerce businesses such as Amazon India and Flipkart, which CAIT is vehemently against. 
 
“Several ministries and state governments are eager to bring more and more sellers on e-commerce platforms but the provision of not allowing sellers without having a GST number has become a major deterrent and roadblock to embrace digital commerce by lakhs of traders of the country,” said Bhartia and Khandelwal.