Festival season is around the corner, sales promotional offers will be a common sight in the market place. More often, promotional schemes are used as effective sales strategy to attract the customer to buy their product.  Among the various promotional offers, Buy One-Get One Free, Free gifts, Flat discounts, and so on, are the popular schemes. In case of newer products, in order to gain market penetration, the concept of free samples are adopted. Under this, products are supplied for free as a sample, and this is very common in the pharmaceutical industry.

What is works contract?

This article has been updated with the GST Council’s decision that suppliers of goods need not pay tax on advance received with effect from 15th November, ’17.

It is a common business practice to give gifts to employees, especially on the occasion of festivals like Diwali, New Year, etc. In addition, companies provide various perquisites to employees, such as housing, laptops, conveyance, health insurance, etc. In the previous indirect tax regime, these gifts were not taxable under VAT or Service Tax. Let us understand the treatment of gifts to employees under GST.

This article has been updated as per the GST Council’s decision to exempt transportation service provided by a GTA to unregistered persons.

In our earlier blog, Who is a Pure Agent in GST? , we discussed various conditions a registered taxable person has to meet to be qualified as a pure agent. In this blog, we will be answering the questions: What is the relevance of determining the Pure Agent Services? Where does it really impact?  Also, we will discuss how to calculate the Pure Agent Value.

A pure agent is a registered taxable person who liaises between other suppliers on behalf of his client. Under this concept, while providing services to the client, he also undertakes to receive other ancillary services from other service providers, and incurs expenditure on behalf of his client. The actual expenditure incurred by a pure agent is later claimed as reimbursement. In other words, over and above the value of services rendered to his client, any other expenditure incurred by a pure agent (on behalf of his client) will be a reimbursement.

What is a consignment sale?
A Consignment Sale is a trade arrangement in which a seller sends the goods to a buyer or reseller; but the payment to the seller happens as and when the goods are sold. The seller remains the owner of the goods or, in other words, the title holder of the goods until they are paid for in full and also, after a certain period, takes back the unsold goods. In most of the cases, such resellers work on a commission basis. Consignment sales under GST has a relatively new treatment which need to be evaluated by businesses.
 

Second-hand goods dealers deal in purchase and sale of used goods. These goods might be sold as they are or after minor refurbishing. In this blog, let us understand the impact of GST on the inward and outward supply of used goods by these dealers. We will also learn about the margin scheme, which is a scheme for paying tax, offered to second-hand goods dealers.
 

In our previous blog, we had discussed about the impact of GST on consignment sales. In this blog, we will be throwing light to an alternate mode of the similar supply i.e. sale on approval basis under GST.