Letters: Tax tally

Harishanker Subramaniam in his article "L&T judgment opens a Pandora's Box" (October 14), says "Now a sale of an apartment would suffer stamp duty and VAT, both levied by state along with service tax levied by the Centre, making such apartments more expensive. The early implementation of the goods and service tax can be the only solution to such multiplicity of taxes…." This is a factually correct picture but the conclusion is flawed. This has happened because of his misunderstanding of the goods and services tax (GST).

Currently, stamp duty is not being included in the GST. It was never even proposed. So, it will be continued to be charged after GST also. The existing value added tax and service tax will be subsumed in the GST and they will also be charged, though in a different name. So, the sale of an apartment will continue to be as expensive as before. The multiplicity of taxes, of course, will be reduced in the sense that in place of three taxes, there will be two.

Sukumar Mukhopadhyay New Delhi

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