Government to revaluate GST on garments, textiles

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Mar 12, 2020

The government will revaluate goods and services tax rates on a range of items including textiles and readymade garments at its upcoming meeting on March 14.

 
The GST Council plans to address the tax rates for sectors including textiles and readymade garments, in order to address the inverted duty structure where tax rates on raw materials are higher than the finished products they are used to make, ET Bureau reported.

The GST Council will also address operational glitches on its GST Network portal and seek a resolution plan from digital technology firm Infosys, which won the contract for managing back-end online GST operations in 2015.

The meeting will also see officials address the current inverted duty structure faced by the mobile phone sector and will consider increasing GST on mobile phones to 18% from the current rate of 12%. If the council moves ahead with the GST increase, mobile phone prices are expected to increase.
 
Other matters that the meeting will address include deferment of e-invoicing and QR code benefits, as well as the possibility of an exemption of certain industries from e-invoicing. The GST Council could also defer the new return form ,which was scheduled to come into effect on April 1.