The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) national general secretary, Praveen Khandelwal has written a letter to the finance minister Nirmala Seetharaman to either ban on seasonal sales offered by the e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart over the tax loss or to keep an eye on the sales.
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The CAIT president accused e-commerce giants of engaging in predatory pricing during the festive sales causing huge loss of GST revenue and income tax to the government. The letter said Amazon’s sale from October 17 and Flipkart’s sale from October 16 are in violation of FDI policy of the government, these organization are entitled to do business-to-business sales but are engaged in business-to-consumers sale. The festive season sale offers a large number of products from 10% to 80% discounts which are predatory pricing. GST incurred by the sale will be less due to the low pricing of the product.
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When asked about allegations of GST revenue loss Amazon spokesperson has said, “Sellers decide pricing. Our focus is to enable over 6.5 lakh sellers reach millions of customers across India We work closely with partners, lenders and financial institutions to help our customers afford more and save big.” CAIT is a body that represents around seven crore traders across the country. CAIT suggests the government should either ban these sales or appoint a ‘Special Task Force’ to monitor the sales. It also suggests the finance ministry to collect the difference in GST and other taxes levied on the actual price of the product.
