The GST Council has fixed the rate on laptops and desktops at 18 per cent, compared with the current levy of 14-15 per cent. Related products such as monitors and printers will be taxed at 28 per cent.
"We want to understand why the same kind of products in a sector have been split into different categories and why there is no synchronisation between them," said Shirpurwala. If the PC is taxed at 18 per cent and the monitor at 28 per cent, the impact on the prices on the consumer market will be high, he added. find other GST Rates from below..
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To understand why government has made such differences, you should know how the things were taxed before GST. Most of the monitors are made in India and were charged excise duty as well as CST (central sales tax for interstate transactions - manufacturing unit to the state where the dealer is located) separately which never used to appear in customer's invoice (Retailers charged only Vat).
And computer hardware & laptops are mostly imported and were charged import duty only & retailers charged VAT.
Some states like Maharashtra also had Octroi charged on items coming from other states - so it also added to the price apart from CST but was not visible to us as consumers. Now since all taxes are amalgamated into one single tax 'GST' - the total tax on any product is visible to us. The dealer will pay only the amount of tax on his margin as he will get an input credit for the tax he has already paid while purchasing the product in purchase invoice. So now there is no multiple taxation as earlier where the taxes used to add to the cost of the product.
Now every citizen can see the actual amount of tax on the final bill which is being charged by the government irrespective of how many distributors, suppliers, dealers & retailers sold the product multiple times from one hand to another.
