Government looking at bringing down number of customs duty levies to five from about dozen presently: Sanjay Malhotra
Revenue Secretary Sanjay Malhotra has said that the government is looking at bringing down the number of customs duty levies to five from about a dozen presently, as part of the duty rationalisation exercise. He stated the reduction in the number of customs rates will help reduce classification disputes.
On Tuesday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget speech said the government will undertake a comprehensive review of the customs rate structure over the next six months to rationalise and simplify it for ease of trade, removal of duty inversion and reduction of disputes.
Malhotra said the rationalisation is intended to reduce the number of tax rates levied on import and export of goods. He stated ‘Right now, the number of tax rates is more than 10, in double digits... Other than exceptions, we want to reduce this to may be 4 or 5 at the most. The purpose basically is to simplify so that classification disputes do not arise...More the rates, more are the classification disputes. The effort is to merge these rates into fewer number of rates so that classification disputes are reduced.’
