GST On Duty-Free Goods Scrapped; Sanctioning GST Becomes Easy With Single Point Of Authorization

In a very welcome move, Allahabad High Court has passed the rule that GST will not be applicable to the goods purchased from the duty-free shops at airports.

This will definitely clear the confusion for us buyers who love to buy chocolates, perfumes and other such products from the duty-free stores at the airports, where they are all cheaper.

Another update from the GST segment is that there will be a single authority who will be in charge of processing and sanctioning the GST refunds.

Read on to know more details about both these updates from the department of GST!

No GST on Duty-Free Goods

The High Court of Allahabad has passed the rule that GST (Goods and Services Tax) will not be levied on the goods that are on sale in the duty-free stores as they don’t cross the border of customs, and passengers carry them along as their personal belongings.

Apparently, a PIL was filed about the exchequer losing revenue, to which Allahabad High Court responded.

However, there is still some confusion as there is a conflict created by two different high courts passing a rule about the transactions carried out by the stores themselves.

Karnataka High Court gave a decision similar to the one Allahabad HighCourt gave, which was that sale or purchase by these stores would be in course of export or import.

Contradictory to that, the MP High Court gave out a ruling that the GST will be applicable on supply to a duty-free shop by an Indian supplier as they are not supplying to a place outside of India.

Single Authority For Sanctioning and Processing GST

GST Network is already working on making the process of filing GST easier, and now there is yet another good news.

There will be a single authority which will take care of the sanctioning and processing GST refunds, in order to boost it and make it less complicated than it already is.

This is how the proposed method will work: the officer to whom the tax refund claim is filed to will have the full authority to check, assess and sanction the full tax refund, be it Central GST or State GST portion. This is called the  ‘single authority mechanism’, and does not differ for Centre or State.

Currently, there are two different personnel handling the same work and it has managed to create a lot of confusion among taxpayers.

Will this new system will make things easier and work smoothly? Share your opinions with us in the comments section!