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Tour operators' delegation asks FM to raise SEIS scrips' benefit to 10%
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SME Times News Bureau | 16 Jun, 2021
A delegation of the Indian Association of Tour Operators
(IATO) called on Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman at her
office on Friday, and urged her to increase SEIS duty credit scrips
percentage to 10 per cent.
SEIS or Service Exports from India
Scheme (SEIS) incentivises notified service providers with transferable
duty credit scrips as a percentage of their net foreign exchange
earnings.
This credit can be used by the service providers to pay a number of central duties and taxes, including the basic Customs duty.
SEIS
scrips are currently given to tour operators on their forex earnings at
the rate of 7 per cent that the industry, which has been one of the
worst affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, finds inadequate at the current
juncture and has sought an increase.
The IATO delegation, which
met the Finance Minister, was led by its President Rajiv Mehra and
Pronab Sarkar, the immediate past President.
While the delegation
thanked the minister for clearing SEIS for the service providers and
for the recent measures like 5 lakh free e-Tourist visas for foreign
tourists and granting of loan on government guarantee to small tour
operators, it also made her aware of the several pending issues, which
if resolved can lead to the revival of the tourism sector in the
country.
The delegation impressed on her not just to retain SEIS
scrips' percentage of 7 per cent, which is being given to the tour
operators for the last couple of years, but raise it to 10 per cent.
If
SEIS cannot be increased, it should be retained at 7 per cent without
consideration of capping of the turnover of the tour operator, the
delegation said.
The IATO delegation also discussed with the
minister the cascading effect of multiple GST on tour operators and
requested her to remove this ‘anomaly' by charging GST on the deemed
total value which could be 10 per cent of gross billing of the tour
operators.
This will allow the service to be taxed at 18 per
cent on 10 per cent mark-up (their fee), which means the effective rate
of GST on the total package cost will work out to 1.8 per cent of gross
billing of the tour operator to his client with no input tax credit.
It
was also requested that GST/IGST be fully exempted on the services
provided outside India, i.e., in the neighbouring countries even if the
package includes India tour, as this is causing loss of business for the
tour operators.
As a result of tax exemption, bookings will
come to Indian tour operators instead of such bookings going to tour
operators based in the neighbouring countries. This will add
considerable foreign exchange to the country.
Another issue that
was taken up was levy of tax collection at source (TCS) on sale of
overseas tour package and it was requested that TCS should not be made
applicable to persons / companies who are non-resident foreign
citizens/tourists/foreign tour operators located outside India for
purchasing tour packages through Indian tour operators for outside India
specified clearly.
Further, the matter of loan under ECLGS was
raised by the delegation, requesting the FM to amend the guidelines
issued by NCGTC as banks are not entertaining applications of tour
operators for availing the ECLGS scheme benefit. It was given to
understand that the revised guidelines are going to be issued to the
banks.
Last and the most important point that was taken up with
the Finance Minister was the long pending demand of the tourism sector
to treat the tourism industry as deemed exporter at par with the IT
industry under export of services based on their foreign exchange
earnings by relaxing the parameters/definition of export of service and
by changing the criteria of place of supply.
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