NEW DELHI: Amid criticism over the GST rate hike on hospital room rent of over Rs 5,000, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) on Thursday notified the rate changes as decided by the GST Council in its 47th meeting held on June 28-29.
These changes will be applicable from July 18. The Council had decided to impose 5% GST on hospital rooms with rent over Rs 5,000 excluding intensive care units. “While the healthcare sector is largely exempt from GST, levying tax on room rentals will increase the treatment cost.
A Levy of 5 % GST on room rentals above Rs 5,000 without input tax credit is a regressive move. Availability of input tax credit is the basic fabric of GST, which gets defeated in this case. It is important for the government to re-look at this aspect,” said Anita Rastogi, partner, GST and indirect taxes at PwC, after the government issued notification.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced changes in various items including knives with cutting blades, spoons, forks, ladles, skimmers, cake servers, fish knives, butter-knives, sugar tongs and similar kitchen or tableware, bicycle pumps, parts of air or vacuum pumps and compressors of bicycle pumps, among others. Meanwhile, it had also imposed GST on hotel accommodation below Rs 1,000/unit/day, bringing them on a par with those above Rs 1,000 threshold.