Input Tax Credit To Benefit End-customer

Looking at the scale of India, it is reasonable to expect 3-5 years for the system to stabilize

- Venkata Ravi Ram

Any day you walk out of a restaurant, a scrutiny of the bill would reveal small entries below the food and beverage charges. These include Service Charges, Service Tax and VAT. This is about those small entries.

Taxes are categorized as direct and indirect. Direct tax is the income tax that a Person (literal & corporate) pays the government directly. In contrast, Indirect Taxes are collected from the citizens, in an indirect manner. For instance, a soap manufacturing company pays excise duty (manufacturing tax). It gets added to the cost of the soap. When the manufacturer sells to consumers, sales tax gets added. The consumer pays these taxes excise duty (goods), and sales tax (services)indirectly. The indirect taxes levied in India include Excise (manufacture), Service tax (services), Central Sales Tax (inter -state sales), VAT (intra-state) Customs duty (import), Countervailing Duty (CVD equivalent to Excise on imports), Special Additional Duty (SAD equivalent to sales tax on imports). In addition, the States in India have their additional points of taxation like State Excise Duty, Octroi etc.