look news india
New Delhi: The GST Council along with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and state representatives on Saturday announced the ridiculous imposition of five per cent GST on salt and pepper popcorn, 12 per cent on prepacked and branded popcorn and 18 per cent on caramel popcorn classified as sugar confectionery. of. After this decision of the Finance Minister, now officials will go to every street and locality to see which popcorn is spicy and which is which. The big question is how will the government decide that it has such a different variety of popcorn. This is why Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s decision to impose different GST on different varieties of popcorn has become a topic of heated debate. Against the decision presented by the Central Government, two former economic advisors of the Central Government have raised questions on the GST system which started from 2017.
The central government’s announcement to impose goods and services tax on popcorn based on sugar and spice content has sparked heated debate. Explaining the reason for imposing 18 percent tax on caramel popcorn, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that any product with added sugar will be taxed separately. This announcement of the government has created a storm of protest on social media. Opposition politicians, economists and supporters of the central government are also strongly criticizing this move. Many other people are having fun by making memes on this. Recently i.e. around October 2024, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had kept zero percent GST on ordinary buns. A ridiculous decision was taken to impose 18 percent GST on the same bun which is sold with butter or jam on it. How to determine whether a bun was sold with or without butter or jam became a problem. The owner of Annapurna chain of restaurants termed the decision as ridiculous as the bigger issue was how to levy separate GST on Kora Buns, Butter Buns and Jammed Buns. He told that it is difficult to collect GST on buns like this. However, this baker ultimately had to apologize to the Finance Minister.
But in the case of popcorn also, it has been decided to impose 5 percent GST on popcorn with marimasala, 12 percent on prepackaged popcorn and 18 percent on popcorn with sugar confection. But it is difficult to determine how much popcorn sold in the market is spicy and sugar confectionary and how much popcorn is sold in branded packets. GST officials may have to conduct fieldwork at theater popcorn stores to determine how much popcorn was sold and how much GST is payable on it.
Former Chief Economic Advisor of India KV Subramanian wrote on social media that complexity is a joy for bureaucrats, but a nightmare for citizens. Questioning the logic behind this decision, he said that this will not only reduce tax revenue but will also cause problems to the citizens.
His predecessor Arvind Subramaniam had also said that while the objective of bringing GST was to simplify and rationalize the tax system, such illogical measures would add complexity and make its implementation difficult.