Flood cess won’t lead to price rise, says Isaac

Thiruvananthapuram: The flood cess being planned by the state would under no circumstances result in any kind of price rise in the market, finance minister T M Thomas Isaac assured the assembly on Wednesday.
Replying to the discussions on demands for grants to the taxes department, Isaac said the cess was one of the few options available to the government to raise some revenue as the state’s liberty to explore new ways to find revenue has been curtailed by the GST regime.
Isaac said the 1% flood cess sanctioned by the GST council, that too only for two years, itself was because of the gravity of last year’s deluge. He said the cess won’t lead to price rise as the GST council has already brought down all the taxes on goods by 3% to 10% and no product could be sold at a higher price than the maximum retail price. The cess will become effective from July 1.
He said that the dip in Gulf remittances and the earnings from GST have severely hit the state’s revenues. In addition, several traders have ineligibly availed input credit that will be checked once the annual returns are received.