Business community seeks clarity on aspects of GST

On the surface, the going seemed calm with dealers in textiles, particularly the smaller establishments, making a note of every sale in the bill book, instead of scribbling the amount on piece of paper, which neither the customer nor the seller used to maintain in the past.

There was a note of surprise as some inquisitive, regular buyers at such shops, preferred a discount, not an invoice, even as the shopkeeper thrust the bill into the pack.

Mukesh, proprietor of Mukesh Textiles, said his auditor had advised him to charge 5 per cent GST on every sale from July 1. “There is no clarity on the rates. It will take some time, this is just a beginning,” he said.

Elsewhere, a dealer in electrical goods and spare parts continued with his earlier practice of selling spares without raising a bill.

Most establishments on that stretch of Nanjappa Road in Coimbatore are dealers in electrical goods, pumps and motors and hardware products such as pipe fittings. A majority of them do not even maintain a register of the inventory.

“It would be just impossible to take stock of the goods here. In any case, the turnover is less than ₹20 lakh,” said a dealer in electrical goods and spare parts.

Bigger corporates though seem better prepared, but big or small, every businessman is hoping the government to be lenient to the mistakes during the initial stages of GST implementation.

K Ilango, past chairman, Confederation of Indian Industry, Coimbatore, said he is clueless over several aspects of the Act, but top of the mind recall is “reverse charge”.

“Section 9(4) of the GST Act is the most complicated and difficult one to comprehend. This section deals with reverse charge and incidentally no one talks of this,” he said, adding, “We have not gone deeper into uploading and stuff like that. There is bound to be some hiccups.”

V Sundaram, president, Codissia, also felt that the government should not penalise traders for mistakes.

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