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Companies tweak strategies as every product sold needs to have notional value in new tax regime There's no such thing as free pizza -or `free' anything -under GST, it would appear. That staple of promotional schemes among consumerfacing packaged products and  foods services companies -buy one get one free -is being axed by many of them a month after the goods and services tax was rolled out. The move is necessitated by the GST fine print, according to which compa nies will have to pay additional tax on anything they give away as `free' to consumers and  stand to lose input cre dit when they classify a product sale as `free'. That's forcing companies to look for other ways to win over customers. “We are doing away with  buy-oneget-one-free offers and are switching to upfront discounting,“ said Mayank Shah, marketing head at biscuit maker Parle Products. “This is causing disruption but it's what is required under the goods and services tax.“ In a slowi

Total customs revenues rise to Rs 26,500 cr as rollout of the new tax regime completes a month The collection of Integrated Goods and Services Tax from imports crossed Rs 20,000 crore in July — the first month of the roll out of the new indirect tax regime,  pointing towards a major jump in revenues. Total customs revenues in July 2017 stood at Rs 26,500 crore as against Rs 16,625 crore collected in July 2016. Collections have been quite robust,” a government official said. However, the official said IGST collections have also received a boost from the fact that there is a component of state GST as well in the tax. Besides, the government has done away with a number of countervailing duty (CVD) exemptions and not extended them under the GST regime that were available in the  previous tax  regime, such as that on some electronic products. The rise in customs revenues on imports should take care of any decline in GST collections because of any production-related disruption

The income tax (IT) department on Monday extended the deadline for e filing of returns by five days, till August 5, after complaints were received that assessees were  not able to submit returns. The department had earlier ruled out extending the deadline for filing returns. The department also eased the timeframe for linking permanent account number (PAN) with Aadhaar by August 30. Assessees can for now simply quote their Aadhaar number  or enrolment ID. “In view of the difficulties faced by taxpayers, date for efiling of income tax returns for FY 2016-17 has been extended to August 5, 2017,” the  department tweeted. Last minute inundation and heavy traffic on the website of the efiling portal led to the extension. Assessees, particularly those with some discrepancies in their name or year of birth, or any other data on their Aadhaar and PAN cards, were not able to submit  returns. Besides, it was reported the site was down forawhile. “Some people for whom PAN and Aadhaa

The Goods and Services Tax Council is likely to consider lowering of tax rates for job works for  making garments to 5 per cent from 18 per cent,a source in the finance ministry has said. The  panel, headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and comprising representatives of all the 29  states, is likely to consider removing anomaly in taxation in cases where the intermediate goods  are taxed at the highest bracket than the tax on final output, the source said. The Business Standard, New Delhi, 01st August 2017