GST to be a censor of e-tailers or not

Online platforms has been very familiar to many of us nowadays. Due to the convenience. Since the e-tailers started to take over the industry, the retailers who are not yet registered on any e-commerce platform were facing really hard competition.

Now that the most important economic reform item on the current government’s agenda that is GST, will soon be a reality. This is one reform which affects all in the society. The GST taxation laws will put an end to multiple taxes which are levied on different products, starting from the source of manufacturing to reaching the end consumer.

GST will not have a uniform impact on all sectors but will be affecting each one of us differently.

Here the e-commerce sector has reasons to be unhappy with the goods and services tax (GST).

Industry stakeholders have said the GST Bill puts the compliance burden on e-tailers as they have thousands of sellers on their platforms. In addition, small sellers will have cash-flow issues as they will have to claim refunds for tax paid on inputs, which e-tailers will not be able to account for.

The major pain point would be tax collection at source, which would create a rift between sellers and e-commerce companies.

In talking to The DQ Week, B.R. Srinivas, a local distributor of Mysore said that “Not being registered on any e-commerce platform always gave competition in sales but after the introduction of GST, being an IT dealer I’m really excited to see the growth in sales again and would welcome customers with great enthusiasm back to the physical stores”.

“Now that consumer is back to the stores after receiving defective product deliveries. We are planning to  give regular services to satisfy the consumers and have reduced the margins to attract  the customers back who have earlier gone to the online retailers” said Vijay Daaga, local dealer, Mysore.

Vijay also added that he’s looking forward to the benefits to be achieved from the introduction of GST but the only problem left is the awareness about the same economic reform.

Online retailers are giving hard competition to the physical store dealers, thus the retailers who are not yet registered on any e-commerce platform are expecting some sort of benefits from GST to be continued in the race which will be analysed with time only.