Exempt outsourced services by higher educational in GST: EPSI

The Education Promotion Society for India (EPSI) has urged the government to exempt outsourced services of higher educational institutions under the GST.
The EPSI representative met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Minister of State Santosh Gangwar and submitted a memorandum.
The society has been in the forefront to take up issues and problems of educational institutions since 2005.
It represents over 300 private universities and about 3,500 private colleges.
Now, it has taken up the matter of GST levy on the outsourced services by higher educational institutions.
The Goods and Services Tax will be rolled out on July 1.

The EPSI has taken a delegation of chancellors, vice chancellors and educationists to meet Jaitley and Gangwar separately.

EPSI's delegation submitted a memorandum both to Jaitley and Gangwar and appraised them about serious implications of GST levy being imposed on the outsourced services like transportation, security, hostel -- mess and canteen, training, medical services, shops and admission related services etc being provided by higher education institutions in their campuses for students, faculty and staff across the country.
Since these services are currently paid by users directly to vendors, GST levy will create financial burden on them and also lead to escalation of the cost of higher education," Harivansh Chaturvedi, Director, BIMTECH, Greater Noida and Alternate President, EPSI, said.

"The EPSI's delegation also explained to both ministers that the levy on outsourced services in many cases will be detrimental to the quality of higher education. The higher educational institutions will be forced to stop outsourcing and do it in-house," he added.
"The management of universities and colleges will unnecessarily be bogged down in managing these services which do not come into their core competencies viz. Higher education," said Chaturvedi.
He said that Jaitley and Gangwar assured the delegation that the matter will be looked into.
"EPSI has also decided to send similar delegations to state finance ministers with a request to raise the matter in the ensuing meeting of the GST Council," he said.