Online food aggregators Swiggy and Zomato will start depositing 5% Goods and Service Tax collected from customers directly with the govern...
Online food aggregators Swiggy and Zomato will start depositing 5% Goods and Service Tax collected from customers directly with the government. The tax on food was earlier deposited with restaurants, who were supposed to pay it to the government.
The decision was taken at the Goods and Service Tax Council meeting that took place in Lucknow on Friday – the first meeting in 20 months.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman clarified that the customers would not be charged a new tax.
“Yes there was detailed discussion [at the meeting],” said Nirmala Sitharaman, according to Moneycontrol. “The place where food is delivered is going to be the point where tax will be collected. They will pay the GST on it. There is no new tax.”
Currently, food aggregators fall under the tax collectors at source category, meaning they collect tax from the restaurants, according to Moneycontrol.
Over the last two years, many restaurants had evaded paying the GST collected, Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj said, according to NDTV. There was a gap in the taxable revenue of certain Haryana restaurants as reported by the online food aggregators while collecting tax at source and the restaurants’ actual revenue.
Since 2019, the tax loss due to alleged under-reporting of restaurants’ revenue by food delivery aggregators...
