The trend of ordering food through apps like swiggy and zomato is increasing in India. In this situation, GST department officials have started investigating whether restaurants that can deliver food are evading tax by joining such platforms without paying taxes on packaging. The GST law has been in force in india since July 1, 2017. According to this, service providers have to collect GST from customers and remit it to the government. In that way, when we, the customers, order food through online apps, we pay for all three: food, delivery, and packaging. In this, tax is also levied on packaging. This is collected from the customer. However, GST officials have suspected that most food companies are evading tax by not paying a large amount of tax to the government for these packaging charges. Following this, food companies that sell food on platforms like zomato have been summoned to submit documents related to the GST payments made for packaging charges from january 1, 2022, to the present.
According to the GST law, when we buy a product and they pack it and deliver it to us, only the tax applicable to the main ingredient in it is levied as tax. But this packaging charge is shown as a separate charge and is only added to the total charge later. Therefore, according to the GST law, restaurants have to pay the GST tax on this packaging charge to the government. But now there is suspicion that most restaurants are evading tax by not paying it. industry insiders say that there has been a long-standing confusion over whether restaurants should pay this tax or apps like zomato and swiggy should pay this tax. For example, if you order food for a thousand rupees, you will have to pay 1260 rupees as a fee including delivery and packaging. In this, apps like zomato and swiggy collect GST and their commission amount and give the remaining amount to restaurants. This raises the question of whether restaurants should pay the GST on packaging or these apps.
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Sowmiya Sriram

22/04/2025 11:49 AM