Ease of doing business for MSMEs: Traders’ body Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) in its budget wishlist on Wednesday urged the government to review the existing Goods and Services Tax (GST) system. It also sought a review of all acts and rules concerning retail trade along with One Nation-One Licence Policy for domestic trade, pension scheme for traders and insurance scheme for traders. CAIT National President BC Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said the GST has emerged as one of the most complicated taxation systems and as such a total review of the system is needed to make it a simple taxation system which can be complied with by the traders and augment substantial revenue to the government.
Moreover, “the retail trade of the country is fraught with a large number of acts & rules and many of them are few decades old and hence, have lost their significance in the present scenario. Therefore, there is an emergent need to review all such acts,” said Bhartia and Khandelwal in its budget recommendations.
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CAIT also asked for a separate credit rating norms for small businesses and the formation of fast-track courts for disputes including payments and dishonouring of cheques under section 138 of the Income Tax Act. “Dishonouring of cheques has become too rampant. Payment disputes between traders take a long time for resolution from courts. Therefore in order to ensure speedy redressal of such disputes, formation of fast track courts is very necessary,” said Bhartia and Khandelwal.
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The association also stressed its long-standing demand for rolling out the e-commerce rules, e-commerce and retail trade policy, and the formation of an e-commerce regulatory authority apart from a separate ministry for internal trade.
Further, CAIT also demanded that similar to the Special Economic Zones in the country, the government should set up Special Trade Zones on the outskirts of villages with one-window facility for obtaining government clearances to boost the rural economy and generate employment opportunities.
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