GST on online transactions up to Rs 2,000 to be referred to fitment committee: Uttarakhand FM Premchand Aggarwal

The decision on the recommendation to levy 18 per cent GST on payment aggregators’ income from transactions under Rs 2,000 has not been made, reported ET Now citing Uttarakhand Finance Minister Premchand Aggarwal. He said that the matter would to be further referred to the fitment committee.

He said that the issue of GST on Research and Development sector was also referred to the fitment committee. He further claimed that GST on religious travel via helicopter has been brought down to 5 per cent from 18 per cent.

ET had earlier reported that large payment aggregators like BillDesk and CCAvenue have received notices from the goods and services tax authorities, demanding GST on the fee they charged merchants for processing digital transactions of under Rs 2,000, three people in the know told ET. Large players in the payments industry include Pine Labs, Paytm, Razorpay, Cashfree, BillDesk and CCAvenue.

“Yes, we have received a show-cause-cum-demand notice,” said Vishwas Patel, joint managing director of Infibeam Avenues which runs payments processor CCAvenue, responding to ET’s queries. “Our teams have responded to the notice,” he said.

BillDesk did not respond to an email seeking comment.
More than 80 per cent of the total digital payments in India are of less than Rs 2,000 in value. The payments aggregators have not been charging tax on the service they provided to merchants on such transactions, following a government notification issued during demonetisation in 2016.“Some of the players have already received the notice. We are anticipating notices too, since the entire industry did not charge merchants and pay GST on sub-Rs 2,000 digital payments transactions abiding by government norms,” the chief executive of another payments firm said on the condition of anonymity.