GST mitigated cascading impact of taxes on civil aviation sector: Minister

New Delhi July 25 (IANS) The government on Tuesday said GST (Goods and Services Tax) has mitigated "ill-effects of cascading taxes on prices across all sectors including civil aviation".

According to Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha GST was introduced with the intention to reduce the overall tax burden on the consumer.

"The GST regime amalgamates a large number of central and state taxes into a single tax and allows set-off of prior stage taxes thereby mitigating the ill-effects of cascading taxes on prices across all sectors including civil aviation " Sinha informed the Rajya Sabha.

In his written reply to a question Sinha elaborated that under the GST regime the applicable tax rate on economy class passenger tickets has been reduced from 6 to 5 per cent while the same for business class has travel been increased from 9 to 12 per cent.

"Petroleum products including ATF are presently outside the purview of GST " the minister said

--IANS
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