Some exemptions and incentives given for promoting exports may be done away with once the Goods and Services Tax (GST) comes into effect, Union Commerce Secretary, Rita A Teaotia, said here on Saturday.
The Commerce Secretary was speaking to the exporters community at a joint session organised by EEPC, FIEO, GJEPC, Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Assocham.
According to her, exemptions and incentives and GST do not go hand-in- hand with one another. It was a basic contradiction.
“Exemptions and incentives those are the things that should go away. For when you are creating a level playing field you are not creating more complications giving scope for arbitrage. As a philosophy we are moving away. We cannot have the GST and more and more incentives and exemptions. It won’t happen. It is a contradiction,” Teaotia said.
GST aims at a minimum duplication of levies, charges and so on. In a fragmented system, there are cascading taxes. But GST aims at creating a level playing field, she reiterated.
Asked to specify the probable exemptions that can be done away with once GST comes into effect, the Commerce Secretarty said: “I am not going to go down that road. We are also not a department (the commerce department) which is framing that law. We are actually giving our inputs.”
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