Act promptly on ease of doing business: Bharat Thakkar

Talking about his anticipation from budget 2017-18, says Bharat Thakkar, Past President and Permanent Member – Board of Adviser, ACAAI & Co-Founder, Zeus Air Services, says, “ACAAI has met with Justice R. V. Easwar and made submissions on simplification of income tax, wherein the issues of withholding tax and tax deducted at source on freight difference by airlines have been explained. Thereafter, this matter has also been submitted to Hon’ble Minister of Finance, Secretary, Department of Finance including Prime Minister’s office (PMO) for appropriate action in line of ease of doing business.”

The proposed Goods and Service Tax (GST) is needed but with few recommendations such as international transportation of goods including freight forwarding and ancillary services in relation to international transportation of goods such as customs clearance, warehousing, storage, cargo handling, packing, unitisation, etc. should be zero rated. Then, the concept of centralised PAN-based registration must be retained, whereby any service provider in the international transportation segment can have a centralised registration and discharge applicable tax through the GST Portal. Further, it has been recommended that the tax payer should be centrally registered at the principal place of business or registered office and undertake compliance from the central location for all activities throughout the country. The place of supply for international transportation of goods, freight forwarding and related services should be the location of the billing address of the recipient of the services as specified in the invoice issued by the service provider. It is not understood why ease of doing business is being side tracked dual and registration is being introduced

The credit should be based on the invoice raised by the service provider without insisting on the matching of invoice data through the systems. Further, it has been recommended that the central location which is allowed a single registration should be permitted to take all credits in that location. Regarding valuation, the following recommendations have been made:

1. a) Section 15 needs to be redrafted to ensure that the transaction value under the GST Law is not devoid of the business realities of our industry. The valuation provisions need to be modified, whereby the value should be the price paid or payable for the supply of goods and/or services.
2. b) Reimbursement of expenses should not form part of the value and pure agency condition needs to be redrafted and made less stringent. Further, reimbursement must be excluded from value in Section 15.
3. c) The provisions in the Valuation Rules pertaining to rejection of declared value based on subjectivity needs to be deleted.

Furthermore, the issue of installation of new hardware for the ICEGATE system has again been delayed from December 2016 to December 2017, which should be looked upon.

Finally, industry status is prudent and should be considered seriously in the Budget 2017-18, to boost the Logistics Industry which is the Back Bone and Un Sung Hero of a EXIM.