GST Chamber

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

₹135.70 ÷ ₹5,000 = 2.714% — यानी ठीक 2.3% चार्ज और उस पर 18% GST (₹115 + ₹20.70)। आज वायरल दूसरा मामला (₹2,500 पर ₹67.85 कटे) भी ठीक यही 2.714% है, और उसके स्क्रीनशॉट में साफ़ लिखा है "Payment Charges – Credit Line on UPI"। यानी ग्राहक ने बैंक खाते से नहीं, UPI से जुड़ी credit line या RuPay credit card से भुगतान किया — उस पर merchant charge आज भी लगता है।

15 अक्टूबर वाला नया MDR अलग है: बैंक-खाते वाले UPI पर 0.4% (₹5,000 पर ₹20 + ₹3.60 GST), सिर्फ ₹2,000 से ऊपर के भुगतान पर, और जिन दुकानदारों को महीने में ₹1 लाख तक UPI से मिलता है उन पर शून्य। QR ऐप के settlement statement में भुगतान का तरीका दिखता है — पहले वही देखिए।

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

फ़ोन पर verification का कोई प्रावधान नहीं है। अधिकारी को कोई जानकारी या दस्तावेज़ चाहिए तो वह portal पर REG-03 notice जारी करता है (Rule 9(2)), और जवाब भी portal पर REG-04 में जाता है। Physical verification हो तो वह आपकी मौजूदगी में site visit है, जिसकी रिपोर्ट REG-30 में portal पर अपलोड होती है (Rule 25)। तय समय में query न आए तो registration deemed approved माना जाता है (Rule 9(5))।

रात को कॉल करने वाले से कहिए कि query portal पर भेजें, और फ़ोन पर कोई दस्तावेज़, OTP या पैसा न दें — नए GST applicants को फ़र्ज़ी कॉल भी आते हैं। परेशानी जारी रहे तो अपने jurisdictional office / CGST zone के registration grievance email पर लिखित शिकायत करें।

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

हाँ, पर पूरी तस्वीर यह है: 15 अक्टूबर से ₹2,000 से ऊपर के merchant भुगतान पर 0.4% MDR (अधिकतम ₹300), और उस MDR पर 18% GST — ₹10,000 के भुगतान पर MDR ₹40 और GST ₹7.20। यह दुकानदार देता है, ग्राहक नहीं; ग्राहक से अलग से वसूलना मना है। ₹2,000 तक के भुगतान पर, और जिन दुकानदारों को महीने में ₹1 लाख तक UPI से मिलता है उन पर, कुछ नहीं लगता। GST-registered (regular scheme) दुकानदार यह ₹7.20 input credit में वापस ले लेता है; composition वाला नहीं।

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

Worth separating the real drags from the jokes in that list. GST never touches your return — it is 18% on the brokerage and on the exchange's and SEBI's charges in each contract note, which at a zero-brokerage broker is a few rupees a trade. MDR, if any, falls on the broker, not on you. The real drags are STT — 0.1% on each side of a delivery trade — and capital-gains tax. GST × 3 is a rounding error next to those two.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

Two facts change the arithmetic, and one point of yours stands. The ₹8 isn't the government's — MDR is the banks' and payment apps' fee. The government's share is the 18% GST on it, ₹1.44, which a regular GST-registered merchant takes back as credit. And a payment of exactly ₹2,000 carries no MDR at all: it applies only above ₹2,000, and not at all to merchants receiving under ₹1 lakh a month by UPI.

Where you're right: the no-surcharge rule is only as strong as the complaints behind it. The route is the bank named on the shop's QR, then the RBI Ombudsman if it doesn't act within 30 days.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

आपका सवाल बिल्कुल सही है, और इसका जवाब GST में नहीं, regulation में है। Digital gold किसी regulator के दायरे में नहीं आता — SEBI ने 8 नवंबर 2025 को चेतावनी दी थी कि यह न security है, न regulated commodity derivative, और securities market की investor-protection व्यवस्था इस पर लागू नहीं होती। इसलिए कोई नियम platform को spread का breakup पहले दिखाने के लिए बाध्य नहीं करता।

जहाँ लागत घोषित और भाव पारदर्शी है, वे SEBI-regulated विकल्प हैं: Gold ETF (expense ratio घोषित, exchange पर भाव) और Electronic Gold Receipts. शिकायत के लिए: पहले platform का grievance officer, फिर National Consumer Helpline 1915.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

No rule can guarantee that, and I won't pretend otherwise. What the rules stop is the visible part: NPCI's FAQ says a merchant may not add the MDR to your bill as a separate UPI charge — if one does, report it to the bank whose QR code he displays. What no rule can stop is a quiet price rise; that is settled by competition, as it has been with card MDR for years.

Two things keep it small: payments up to ₹2,000 (over 96% of UPI merchant volume, per NPCI) and merchants receiving under ₹1 lakh a month carry no MDR at all, and above that it is 0.4%, capped at ₹300.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

Worth showing him what NPCI confirmed today. No MDR on any payment up to ₹2,000 — more than 96% of UPI merchant payments by volume — and none at all for a merchant whose UPI receipts are up to ₹1 lakh a month. Nothing starts before 15 October. So for most neighbourhood shops the charge he switched off UPI to avoid is zero.

Where it does bite is a bigger shop taking ₹2,000+ bills on thin margins. A GST-registered one on the regular scheme gets the 18% GST on the fee back as input credit; a composition dealer does not.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

GST is never on your money — only on a bank's fee, and only when a fee is actually charged. Withdrawals and deposits inside the free limit: no fee, no GST. Online NEFT from a savings account: banks have been barred from charging for it since 01.01.2020 (RBI), so nothing to tax. UPI MDR: paid by the merchant, not by you.

Loan interest, which a few replies mention, is exempt (Sl. 27 of Notification 12/2017-CT(R)); only the processing fee is taxed. Credit-card interest is the exception and is taxed.

Before GST these fees carried service tax — 15% by 2016 — so the change was three points, not eighteen.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

Part of this has a GST explanation, and it isn't insurers being clever. When individual life and health policies became exempt on 22.09.2025, insurers also lost input tax credit — s.17(2) blocks credit on exempt supplies. Say ₹30 of every ₹100 premium goes on agent commission, rent and IT carrying ₹5.40 of GST. They used to set that off against the ₹18 they collected; now it is a cost inside the price. Full pass-through takes ₹118 to about ₹105, not ₹100.

The rest is usually an age-band jump or medical inflation — compare the pre-tax premium on your last two renewal notices.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

One that does not go the taxpayer's way. Anyone billing a State water board, development authority or similar corporation should read it.

GSTAT Thiruvananthapuram has held that the Kerala Water Authority is not a local authority. s.2(69) says "means", and the list is closed: Panchayat, Municipality, a Municipal Committee / Zilla Parishad / District Board or other body entrusted with municipal or local funds, Cantonment Board, the Sixth Schedule councils, and the Article 371A and 371J bodies. A State Act that deems a corporation to be a local authority does not add to that list, and how the body is classified in its own GST registration changes nothing.

Why it costs money: Notification 22/2021-CT(R) removed "a Governmental Authority or a Government Entity" from the 12% works-contract entries of Notification 11/2017-CT(R) with effect from 01.01.2022. Works contracts for such bodies have been 18% since that date, and the differential was upheld.

The taxpayer did win the interest limb — interest was confined to the part of the differential paid in cash, none on the part paid from the credit ledger. Note that the proviso to s.50(1) has its own carve-out once s.73/74 proceedings have started, so expect that to be contested.

2026 (9) TMI 1412 (GSTAT Thiruvananthapuram)

#GST #WorksContract #GSTAT #LocalAuthority

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

An e-way bill expired mid-journey. The vehicle was checked 50 minutes later. The penalty was 200% of the tax. Calcutta High Court has cut it to ₹10,000.

Holding: Rule 138(10) lets the transporter extend an e-way bill within eight hours of its expiry — the rule itself recognises that expiry is not the end of the matter. Here the goods were intercepted about 50 minutes after that window closed. Every other document was in order, the delay came from a technical halt, and nothing on record suggested an attempt to evade tax. Following its own Division Bench line, the Court set aside the s.129(1)(a) penalty of 200% of tax, substituted a token fine of ₹10,000 and directed refund of the balance already deposited.

Practical point: expiry by itself is not evasion, but proportionality has to be argued on a record. Note the reason for the halt the day it happens — breakdown, diversion, weighbridge queue — and put it in the reply to MOV-07 along with the extension attempt.

2026 (9) TMI 1421 (Calcutta HC)

#GST #EwayBill #Section129 #GSTLitigation

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

Half right. Customs duty and the Social Welfare Surcharge on imported parts do stick in the price — there is no credit for them. But the IGST paid on those imports does not: the assembler takes it as input tax credit under s.16 and it washes out, so "GST on imported components" is not a layer on top of the 18% at retail. And the US figure is a shelf price before sales tax; add 7–8% before comparing. What remains after that is Apple's pricing, which nobody outside Apple can split.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

AGILE-PRO is only the front door. The application lands with the GST officer under the same Rule 9 as a direct REG-01: 7 working days, or 30 days where Aadhaar authentication was not done or physical verification was ordered — and if no REG-03 query issues within that time, registration is DEEMED granted (Rule 9(5)). "Applied For" after 74 days almost always means a REG-03 went to the email given in the form and was never answered. Check Track Application Status on the GST portal with the ARN: pending query, reply to it; nothing pending, write to the jurisdictional zone's registration grievance email under Instruction 04/2025 quoting Rule 9(5). That route moves these; the MCA ticket cannot.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

The bank delay is the bank's problem; the GST side you can fix yourself. Cancellation for not adding a bank account is Rule 21(d) read with Rule 10A. Once the account is live, apply for revocation in REG-21 within 90 days of the cancellation order (Rule 23) with the bank proof attached; the officer then has 30 days to decide. For the bank, a written complaint to its nodal officer first — no reply within 30 days, RBI Ombudsman.

And delete the account number and customer ID from this post.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

The ¥6,499 already contains China's 13% VAT, so adding 18% on top double-counts tax. Strip it first: ¥6,499 ÷ 1.13 = ¥5,752, about ₹82,300; add India's 18% and you get about ₹97,100.

The ₹1.2 lakh you expect is quite possible, but the extra ₹23,000 would be Vivo's India pricing — duty on imported components, distribution margin, a forex buffer — not GST. Same trap as iPhone comparisons: US shelf prices exclude sales tax, Chinese ones include VAT.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

One structural reason the cuts did not stick, and it sits in the statute rather than the politics. The anti-profiteering check in s.171 was sunset — no new complaint could be filed after 01.04.2025 (Notification 19/2024-CT) — so September 2025 was the first big rate change with no legal mechanism forcing a price reduction. Pass-through was left to competition, and revised-MRP stickers were allowed on transition stock.

The apparel point is fair for a different reason: garments above ₹2,500 a piece went UP from 12% to 18% on the same day, while those between ₹1,000 and ₹2,500 came down to 5%.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

Two things this note should add, because they decide who actually pays.

1. 18% GST applies on the MDR — it is the bank's service to the merchant — so the merchant's cost is 0.472% before credit. A GST-registered merchant takes the GST back as input tax credit; an unregistered one does not.

2. NPCI's FAQ says the merchant may not pass the MDR on to the customer, and that merchants receiving under ₹1 lakh a month by UPI pay none.

Say the second one loudly. Half the anger in this thread is from people who think it lands on the payer.

[GST Chamber @gstchamber]

GSTAT Lucknow on the oldest GST dispute of all — the GSTR-3B vs GSTR-2A mismatch.

Three holdings:

1. A 3B–2A mismatch by itself proves nothing against the credit. s.155 puts the burden on the claimant, but the officer has to test the credit category by category and invoice by invoice — supplier reporting errors, B2B shown as B2C, reverse-charge credit, unclaimed credit, later reversals. Circular 183/15/2022-GST applies to pending proceedings for the period, and supplier certificates for the disputed year count even if issued years later.

2. Supplier charged IGST on renting a property in the same State? Place of supply is where the property is (s.12(3) IGST Act), so the supply was intra-State (s.8(2)); the supplier's head error caused no loss of revenue and the recipient's CGST/SGST credit stands.

3. No effective hearing — the taxpayer was disrupted by grave personal circumstances — means fresh adjudication.

For FY 2017-18 and 2018-19 matters still in appeal, this is the Tribunal-level authority to cite alongside the circular.

2026 (9) TMI 1420 (GSTAT Lucknow)

#GST #ITC #GSTR2A #GSTAT