Lords Hotels & Resorts Submits Recommendations In GST To Hon’ble FM (MoS), GoI Shri Shiv Pratap Shukla
Mumbai, December 16, 2017: Indo-American Business Chamber of SME in association with Lords Hotels & Resorts recently organized a comprehensive forum on Goods & Service Tax (GST) for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) at the Hotel Sahara Star. The forum was especially held for the large SME sector in the state and witnessed a good presence of entrepreneurs from various industries including manufacturing, real estate, hospitality and banking. Shri Shiv Pratap Shukla, Hon’ble Minister of State (MoS) for Finance, Government of India who was the Chief Guest for the evening addressed the many concerns expressed by the attendees and clarified many nuances around the latest GST resolutions announced last month.
“We wish to take this opportunity to thank the Govt. for taking such a bold step that promises to revolutionize the taxation system of the country. The visionary ‘One Nation, One Tax’ as conceived by our Honourable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has the potential to propel the economy into fast lane and help achieve our dream of becoming one of the most prosperous countries in the world,” said Mr P R Bansal, Chairman & Managing Director, Lords Hotels & Resorts.
While applauding the Govt. and its revolutionary tax reform, Mr Bansal also raised a few concerns affecting the real estate and hospitality sectors. In his speech, he appealed to the Minister to consider the pleas and convey the concerns to the GST Council for deliberation.
“While the GST will most definitely simplify and unify the tax system, certain sectors could be affected on account of the high tax slabs demarcated for them. For instance, for the real estate sector, the GST rate applicable for home buyers ranges between 12 and 18 per cent and which translates to a massive increase in the cost of owning a house. For instance, a 2BHK flat in Mumbai costing Rs.1.5 crores at a GST rate of 18 per cent will increase the cost by Rs.27 lacs and which is a significant jump in the end price paid by the consumer. We hope the Govt. will relook at the applicable GST rate for the home buyer and consider revising it to a more affordable rate. Belonging to the hotel industry, we have come to realize that there is disparity in the GST rate that becomes applicable for the room tariff paid by the customer versus the rate at which they should be billed. The present system expects hotels to bill the customer on the Published Tariff whereas the customer may have actually been billed a discounted tariff. This again increases the cost burden on the consumer and so we request that the Govt. amends the system for hotels to levy GST based in the billed tariff to the customer rather than on the Published tariff,” he added.
The GST council in its last meeting in Guwahati reduced the GST rates on 178 commodities from 28 per cent to 18 per cent. The Minister stated that the Govt. has been working to accommodate the critical requests received from the several industries and pointed out that it was based on such requests from the hospitality industry that it reduced the GST rate from 18 per cent to 5 per cent.
“The Govt. is very sensitive towards the demands of the masses and strives to meet their demands. The reduction in GST rate for restaurant was one such decision that the GST Council made based on the feedback we received from the people. We are happy that we not only reduced the GST rate from 18 per cent to a low of 5 per cent but also made it uniform for all restaurants. We are also hoping to bring down the GST rates on other services and commodities like we did for the 178 commodities during the last council meet,” Shri Shiv Pratap Shukla concluded.
Corporate Comm India(CCI Newswire)
