The Confederation of All India Traders ( CAIT) has drawn the attention of Union Finance Minister Smt Nirmala Sitharaman towards an anomaly under GST which runs contrary to the vision of “Digital India “ of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and urge her to set the things right in next GST Council meeting by taking a decision to amend Section 24 and Section 52 of the Goods & Services Act. The CAIT has urged that mandatory condition of obtaining GST registration for e-commerce supplies should be exempted in section 24 and under section 52, collection of one percent GST tax rate may be levied on e-commerce marketplace or Aggregator for all the transactions that happened on their respective platform and in this way, the Government will be able to track the transactions and will also accrue tax revenue from e-commerce portals
CAIT National President Mr B C Bhartia and Secretary General Mr Praveen Khandelwal said that under GST Act a seller who wishes to sell products in e-Commerce is invariably required to obtain GST No. Any seller who does not have GST No is not allowed to sell products on any e-Commerce portal. This provision of the Act is barring not only lakhs of traders across the Country from using e-Commerce to sell their products but even prohibit large numbers of small businesses of artisans, craftsmen, household and cottage industry, women entrepreneurs who are conducting businesses from their home to supplement the income of the family and people of other similar sections of the society.
Mr Bhartia & Mr Khandelwal said that on the one hand in pursuance of the vision of PM Modi, several ministries and state governments are eager to bring more and more sellers on e commerce platform but the provision of not allowing sellers without having GST number has become a major deterrent and roadblock to embrace digital commerce by lakhs of traders of the Country. Though the Govt is making all efforts for empowerment of small retailers in the Country but since these small retailers are having their annual turnover less than Rs 40 lakhs which is threshold limit under GST and such retailers are not required to obtain GST registration,and hence this threshold relief given by the GST Council has become a nightmare for those small traders who wish to adopt digital commerce.
Shri Bhartia and Shri Khandelwal said that it will be pertinent to remove the condition of GST number while onboarding on any e-commerce portal . For the purpose of authentication, the Aadhar number, Bank Account details or similar other measures may be designated as essential qualification for onboarding on e-commerce portals .They further said that such a provision is badly hitting not only the domestic market but even exports are being suffered to a greater extent .
