ADVERTISEMENT

Government Plans Lottery Scheme To Lure Customers To Pay GST

The government is planning to introduce a lottery scheme to lure customers to pay Goods and Service Tax.



Customers browse items at a wholesale store selling sunglasses near Mangaldas Market in Mumbai, India. A Goods and Services Tax (GST) for India will in effect create one of the world’s biggest free trade areas. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)
Customers browse items at a wholesale store selling sunglasses near Mangaldas Market in Mumbai, India. A Goods and Services Tax (GST) for India will in effect create one of the world’s biggest free trade areas. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)

The government is planning to introduce a lottery scheme to lure customers to pay Goods and Service Tax, a step to improve compliance and plug tax leakages, according to a government official.

The plan, still at an initial stage, is to hold daily and monthly lotteries for customers who take a copy of the bill after paying GST for business-to-consumer transactions, the official said on condition of anonymity. The bill will have to be uploaded on a dedicated portal through which names of winners will be selected, he said.

A minimum threshold for bills would be decided to participate in the lottery, and this would exclude water and electricity bills, the official said, adding that the money for the lottery would come from the consumer welfare fund, where proceeds of anti-profiteering are transferred.

Newspaper Times of India first reported that the government is considering multiple options to plug leakages in business-to-consumer transactions like incentivising QR Code-based transactions, lotteries, and loyalty programmes similar to those offered by credit card companies.

The scheme is on similar lines with the one introduced by the Delhi government to reward customers for paying value added tax, the official quoted earlier said. According to the scheme launched by the Delhi government, a customer was eligible for a prize of five times the taxable value subject to a cap of Rs 50,000 for purchases made from a registered dealer. The minimum taxable value of goods was Rs 100.