IGST on ocean freight is not permissible under law: Gujarat High Court

Ocean freight is the cost incurred through an agreement between two foreign parties to bring goods to India via ocean.

The Gujarat High Court has declared imposition of integrated goods and services tax (IGST) on ocean freight as violative of the Constitution. Ocean freight is the cost incurred through an agreement between two foreign parties to bring goods to India via ocean.

Allowing petitions against the tax, the court said the levy and collection of tax on ocean freight was not permissible under the law.

“The taxability dispute on ocean freight has been finally decided by the court to hold that taxing the ocean freight is ultra vires and leads to double taxation,” said Abhishek Rastogi, partner at Khaitan & Co. Petitions are also pending before the HCs in Delhi and Mumbai, in this matter.

Explaining the case, Rastogi said a provision in the Central GST Act permitted levy of both basic Customs duty and IGST on the cost, insurance and freight (CIF) value of goods brought into India, as well as an additional IGST component on ocean freight between two foreign parties for movement of such goods.

For instance, if goods come from Washington to London and are shipped further to Mumbai, there is an element of ocean freight between the parties in Washington and London. This could include steamship costs, broker commissions, duties and tariffs, vessel and port maintenance costs, and labour costs, etc.

The petitioners have raised questions on the additional tax levied on the ocean freight element, when the basic customs duty and IGST are already paid on the CIF value. This indicates double taxation, given the ocean freight element already includes CIF.

Fiscal deficit for April-November likely stood at 107% of FY20 target

For the deficit to be 3.3 per cent of GDP, it assumes a nominal GDP growth of 12 per cent in FY20.

Business Standard : The Centre’s fiscal deficit for April-November likely stood at 107 per cent of the fiscal year 2019-20 target of Rs 7.04 trillion, said senior government sources. This compares to 114.8 per cent for April-November, 2018-19, and 102.4 per cent till the end of October this year.

The April-November fiscal deficit data will be officially released on December 31.

“At end-November, fiscal deficit is at 107 per cent of the full-year target,” said an official. In absolute terms, that comes to around Rs 7.53 trillion.

This means that for the remaining four months of the fiscal year, the Centre has to initiate a heavy compression of expenditure in order to meet the fiscal deficit target, which has been pegged at 3.3 per cent of GDP. For the first half of the year (April-September), fiscal deficit was at 6.6 per cent of the GDP for that period.

However, as reported earlier, the Narendra Modi government is highly likely to miss its fiscal deficit target for 2019-20. It could be between 3.5 per cent to 3.8 per cent of GDP. A final call on the what it will be, within the 3.5-3.8 per cent range, will be taken by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her budget team after the advance tax numbers are available in mid-December.

For the deficit to be 3.3 per cent of GDP, it assumes a nominal GDP growth of 12 per cent in FY20. Officials now concede that nominal GDP growth for the year will nowhere be close to 12 per cent. The nominal GDP growth for April-June was 6 per cent and that for July-September was 6 per cent. With the Reserve Bank of India’s latest forecast of 5 per cent real GDP growth for 2019-20, even a 3 per cent deflator would take nominal GDP growth to around 8 per cent.

That means that theoretically, even if the fiscal deficit for the year is Rs 7.04 trillion, as a percentage of GDP, it will shoot up to around 3.5 per cent. Given the revenue scenario, that seems difficult.

While the divestment target is expected to be met and non-tax revenues could even be exceeded, tax revenues remain a major cause of concern and a shortfall of at least Rs 2 trillion is expected in gross tax revenue.