Archives for 2018

Amidst teething troubles and glitches in the implementation framework, the landmark reform of Goods & Services Tax (GST), ushering in a unified tax regime, has helped in speeding up real estate recovery and easing business transactions but has not lived up to its promise of providing significant price relief to consumers, even one year after its implementation.

Home buyers who had pinned high hopes on GST for reduction in property prices are disappointed as the overall cost of a property purchase has not come down — rather, in some cases, it has gone up.

The GST, which was introduced on July 1, 2017, has done away with multiple taxation of VAT, service tax, central excise duty, octroi, etc. In the pre-GST regime, the average tax burden on home buyers was about six per cent, though in some states, due to higher taxation, it was in double digits. However, in the GST regime, there is a single tax levy of 12 percent on the sale of under-construction residential property.

Though real estate developers are entitled to Input Tax Credit (ITC), against the purchase of construction material, yet its impact is said to be marginal in terms of tax relief.

Even in the affordable housing segment under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), where the effective tax under GST works out to be eight per cent, after taking into account one-third abatement towards cost of land, there is no significant cost benefit.

For states where the net taxation in the pre-GST regime was on the higher side, there is no additional tax liability on home buyers, even if there is no cost benefit.

The real problem is that the benefit of ITC is not accruing to home buyers in terms of cost reduction as it is not effectively passed on to buyers due to its complex nature and lack of clarity.

There is still no clarity on abatement available for land cost for calculating service tax on under-construction projects, thereby having major implications on the final price.

According to Anuj Puri, Chairman, Anarock Property Consultants, the ITC confusion goes beyond percentage of rebate to mode and tranche of rebate due to the complexity of calculating it.

Ramesh Nair, CEO & Country Head, JLL India, further elaborates on the complexity of ITC: “There are different tax computation methods for different projects/phases of the same project. Further, there is ineligibility of refund to developers under the inverted duty structure, considering inputs are procured at a higher rate of tax whereas output is charged at a lower tax rate.”

Thus, builders are seeking to simplify the tedious process for filing returns and are asking for a more structured mechanism for legal protection against defaults.

Real estate developers engaged in affordable housing are also not too happy with the benefit of price reduction through GST. Affordable housing crusaders like Pradeep Aggarwal of Signature Global call for either abolishing or at least significantly reducing the tax rate to push affordable housing and realise the “Housing for All” mission.

Luxury housing developers also complain that as the land cost component is quite high in this segment, there is no significant corresponding benefit.

There is a case for subsuming stamp duty on property transactions in GST to make it much more effective in terms of price benefit. However, property buyers are reaping rich benefit of investing in ready residential properties as there is zero GST and no development risk.

There is yet another glaring aspect of GST: That it is restricted to under-construction residential projects and is not applicable to ready-to-move properties or to the secondary market. This, according to Honey Katyal, CEO, Investors Clinic (a leading real estate marketing company), may discourage buyers to book under-construction properties despite the fact that buying a ready property is always expensive and the relative impact of GST is almost nullified in that case.

Notwithstanding these teething problems, the positive impact of GST on the real estate sector as a whole cannot be overlooked. GST has made the realty sector more streamlined and transparent, with tax predictability, thereby boosting investors’ sentiments, leading to a spurt in foreign investments. And there is the emerging asset class within real estate – warehousing, which has got a major push with GST.

A recent World Wealth Report by Capgemini reveals that key reforms like GST and RERA have proved to be a major driver for reviving real estate. After a gap of about eight years, the equity capital market is witnessing a return of realty IPOs. And, as the government sets out to refine the architecture and compliance process of GST to make it more robust, a HSBC report says that, in the coming years, GST will lead to greater formalisation.

The government’s attempts to finetune GST, particularly its new proposal to reduce GST on construction material from 28 percent to 18 percent, will have a major positive impact on property costs, thereby realising the long-term goal of making housing affordable.

Touted as the biggest economic reform since Independence, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was supposed to replace the complex indirect tax system prevalent in the country with a more simplified, uniform regime.

As its roll-out completes one year on June 30, it can be argued that while India has come a long way from a complicated taxation system, with over a dozen different taxes and many more cesses, GST is still far away from an ideal taxation regime.

Also, the one year journey of the GST has not been a smooth one either with glitches and teething problems experienced from day one. While many of those glitches were addressed by a proactive government, some still remain to be resolved including simplification of return filing and further rationalisation of tax rates.

According to NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Rajiv Kumar: “GST has put the economy on a completely different paradigm now because more and more pressure will be on people to register under GST and bring their economic activity into the formal sector.”

It is not enough only to analyse the one year journey, but it is important to understand the future roadmap.

While many economist would argue that an ideal GST structure should have a universal coverage and a single tax rate, most would also agree that it was not practical for a country like India with vast economic disparities. This is a stand the government has also maintained often giving the example that “a BMW car and a Hawai ‘chappal’ (flip-flops) can’t be taxed at the same rate”.

However, having six different rates — 5, 12, 18 and 28 per cent apart from some items being taxed at zero per cent and gold at 3 per cent — makes India’s GST one of the most complex in the world, something acknowledged by the World Bank in its biannual India Development Update report.

“To make things worse, petroleum products, power and real estate have been kept outside the GST ambit,” the report noted.

It added that not only India has one of the largest number of tax slabs, but at 28 per cent, it has the highest standard GST rate in Asia and the second highest in the world after Chile.

Soon after the new indirect tax system was rolled out, NITI Aayog Member Bibek Debroy — who is now also the chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council — had told IANS that “India is a long way off from the ideal GST structure and it may not get there anytime in the near future”.

Favouring a maximum of three GST rates with all items covered, Debroy had said that starting with seven rates, “depending on how you count it”, has put India in a situation where it may not get to the ideal GST.

Fast forward to present. The economy is still grappling with the rather high multiplicity of tax rates while also debating bringing petroleum products, electricity and other items into the GST net with little clarity in the picture.

While there has been expression of intent by the government to merge some of the tax slabs, there has been little progress on that front so far.

Right from the first day of the roll-out on July 1 last year, there were technical glitches appearing on the GST Network portal causing a lot of hardship to taxpayers in registering on the network. There were often instances of the portal not being able to take the load of last-minute rush to file returns, forcing the government to postpone the filing deadlines several times.

The glitches also led to export refunds piling up, resulting in a grave situation of cash crunch for exporters, whose working capital was getting blocked.

However, to address this, the government initiated two special fortnight-long drives (extended by a few days later) to process pending refunds — one in March and another in June — clearing a major portion of the backlog while some still remains.

To address the GST network issues, the GST Council has set up a five-member ministerial panel headed by Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Modi to oversee its functioning and smoothen the process.

“GST is a very huge and complex exercise and one has to be honest that it could be implemented better and the details could have been (better) thought through,” the NITI Aayog’s Kumar told IANS.

While there was consensus that no reform could be undertaken without some glitches and teething problems, which could be addressed as we go along, one major concern was that GST might lead to some loss of revenue, especially for the states.

This fear almost came true when GST collections fell for two consecutive months from over Rs 92,000 crore (later revised to Rs 95,132 crore) in September to Rs 83,346 crore (later revised to Rs 85,931 crore) in October, and Rs 80,808 crore (later revised to Rs 83,716 crore) in November.

This prompted the GST Council in its December meeting to prematurely roll out the e-way bill mechanism for inter-state movement of goods from February 1 to plug gaps and check tax evasion.

The e-way bill portal crashed on Day One prompting the government to extend the trial period and eventually postponing the roll-out to April 1.

According to the NITI Aayog Vice Chairman, in a country like India, which is proud of its IT sector, there is hardly any excuse for the IT systems not to work.

However, when the system was rolled out the second time on April 1, the technical issues were sorted out and infrastructure boosted enough for a smooth implementation. The revenue collections also picked up subsequently crossing the Rs 1 lakh crore mark in March (collected in April) — which was, however, attributed to the financial year-end effect — and then again showing credible buoyancy in April when it crossed the Rs 94,000 crore.

Kumar said now that the GST has stabilised, it would give a massive fillip to economic activity.

Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said earlier this week that GST had now entered a “smooth phase” with good tax compliance. He added the priority of the government would now be simplification of tax return forms.

Deloitte India Partner Prashant Deshpande said while GST has resolved the issues of multiple taxable events and double taxation, there are some concerns which still need to be addressed.

“On the legislation side, GST can be improved by extending it to petroleum products, electricity, land and building which are currently taxed under old laws… The number of tiers in tax rate structure are required to be reduced to resolve classification issues,” Deshpande told IANS.

On the execution side, he added, prime concern is the GST compliance infrastructure “which is complex and cumbersome” which needs to be replaced with “a simple and robust compliance system”.

It would a while before such a system comes into effect.

In a bid to add another billion users from emerging markets including India, Facebook-owned Instagram has quietly released a lighter version of its app called “Instagram Lite” for Android on Google Play App Store.

Although there is no official statement yet from Facebook, the launch of ‘Instagram Lite’ app appears to a pilot run among a select countries to begin with.

There are millions of smartphone users in India who still have old variants with slow 2G Internet connectivity and “Instagram Lite” can help them get in touch with friends and family.

“The ‘Instagram Lite’ app is small, allowing you to save space on your phone and download it quickly,” read the app’s description on Play Store.

“At just 573 kilobytes, ‘Instagram Lite’ is 1/55th the size of Instagram’s 32MP main app. It lets you filter and post photos to the feed or Stories, watch Stories and browse the Explore page, but currently lacks the options to share videos or Direct message friends,” TechCrunch reported on Thursday.

With this new version of the photo messaging app, users using older phones with less storage space or slower internet connections, would have access to Instagram without having to delete photos, apps or wait longer and pay more to download it.

The app would run on Android versions 5.0 and up.

“We are testing a new version of Instagram for Android that takes up less space on your device, uses less data and starts faster,” an Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch earlier.

With over a billion users, Instagram is a very popular app from the Facebook family.

Facebook launched “Facebook Lite” in 2015 which had 200 million users by the end of last year. Facebook “Messenger Lite” came in April this year.

Aiming to take on Google-owned YouTube, Instagram this month announced it would allow users to upload videos up to one hour in length, up from the previous one-minute limit.

“We launched IGTV (a button inside the Instagram home screen, as well as a standalone app) at an event featuring many of the Instagram creators who’ll make it great,” the company wrote in a blog post.

Not just celebrities, IGTV will let all users be a creator and let them upload vertical videos through Instagram’s app or the web.