Government Think Tank Proposes End of GST Exemption to Address Unequal Benefits

• A government think tank has proposed the end of GST exemption.
• The think tank argues that tax exemptions benefit the rich more than the lower strata of consumers.
• The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs chairman supports the end of exemptions to simplify the GST structure.
• Currently, essential and basic goods and services are exempt from GST.
• The think tank’s study found that exempted items account for only 20% of a low-income household’s monthly expenditure.
• There are currently nine tax slabs in GST.
• The study considered 123 major groups of items to determine the distributional impact of taxes and exemptions.
• The lowest income households spend around 20% of their money on GST-exempt items.
• The lowest income group spends around 35% of their money on items taxed at 5% GST.

Source: a2ztaxcorp.com

Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.

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