Budget 2020: Key Takeaways of Indirect Tax Proposals

Indirect Tax Proposals - Budget 2020 - Budgetscan - GST - Customs Duty - Taxscan

In a Union Budget 2020 presented today, the Union Finance Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman has proposed the various Indirect Tax Proposals.

GST:

  • Cash reward system envisaged incentivizing customers to seek invoices.
  • Simplified return with features like SMS based filing for nil return and improved input tax credit (ITC) flow to be implemented from 1st April 2020 as a pilot run.
  • Dynamic QR-code capturing GST parameters proposed for consumer invoices.
  • Electronic invoices to capture critical information in a centralized system to be implemented in a phased manner.
  • Aadhaar based verification of taxpayers being introduced to weed out a dummy or non-existent units.
  • GST rate structure being deliberated to address inverted duty structure.

Customs Duties:

  • Customs duty raised on footwear to 35% from 25% and on furniture goods to 25% from 20%.
  • Basic customs duty on imports of newsprint and light-weight coated paper reduced from 10% to 5%.
  • Customs duty rates revised on electric vehicles and parts of mobiles.
  • 5% health cess to be imposed on the imports of medical devices, except those exempt from BCD.
  • Lower customs duty on certain inputs and raw materials like a fuse, chemicals, and plastics.
  • Higher customs duty on certain goods like auto-parts, chemicals, etc. which are also being made domestically.

Trade Policy Measures

  • Customs Act is amended to enable proper checks of imports under FTAs.
  • Rules of Origin requirements to be reviewed for certain sensitive items.
  • Provisions relating to safeguarding duties to be strengthened to enable regulating such a surge in imports in a systematic way of indirect tax proposals.
  • Provisions for checking to dump of goods and imports of subsidized goods being strengthened.
  • Suggestions for reviews of exemptions from customs duty to be crowd-sourced.
  • Excise duty proposed to be raised on Cigarettes and other tobacco products, no change made in the duty rates of bidis.
  • Anti-dumping duty on PTA abolished to benefit the textile sector.

Unprecedented Milestones and Achievements of Indian Economy

  • India now the fifth largest economy in the world.
  • 4% average growth clocked during 2014-19 with inflation averaging around 4.5%.
  • 271 million people raised out of poverty during the 2006-16.
  • India‟s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) elevated to US$ 284 billion during 2014-19 from US$ 190 billion during 2009-14.
  • Central Government debt reduced to 48.7% of GDP (March 2019) from 52.2% (March 2014).

Two cross-cutting developments: Proliferation of technologies (Analytics, Machine Learning, robotics, Bioinformatics, and Artificial Intelligence).

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