सविस्तर माहितीसाठी Business Line [ The Hindu ] मधील बातमी वाचावी

One of the main areas of litigation under the Central Excise Act is classification of goods under the detailed but over-exhaustive Central Excise Tariff. Among other things, tax tribunals and courts in India have debated at length whether parts of an air-conditioner are air-conditioners and whether a saree should be classified as a saree or a ready-made garment.

The devil was always in the details in winning these classification battles. A question that was popping up now and then was whether it was necessary to go down to the minutest detail in classifying tariff items.

Those many tariffs
Some months ago, the GST Council came to an agreement on four rates of GST; namely, 5 per cent, 12 per cent, 18 per cent and 28 per cent. The transition to GST provided an excellent opportunity to lawmakers to substantially shorten the Central Excise Tariff and fit the shortened tariff into these four rates. An easy way to do so would have been to fix GST rates on the Chapter Headings instead of going into the detailed contents of each Chapter.

Like in most other things in the GST law, the lawmakers have decided to use existing laws as the foundation on which to frame GST instead of thinking afresh. In fact, they have made it even more exhaustive by adding a classification list of more than 800 services classified into about 100 groups.

via GST’s tariff troubles | Business Line