New Delhi: Conceding a year-long demand, sanitary pads today exempted from GST as the GST Council reduced tax rates on several daily use products and appliances.
The plea to exempt sanitary napkin from GST has been going on for a long time. “Sanitary napkins to be exempted from Goods & Services Tax (GST),” said Finance Minister Piyush Goyal. Goyal said that while GST tax on sanitary pads was cut from 12% to zero, rakhis were exempted from the tax.
In January this year, a group of students from Gwalior had launched a campaign by writing messages on sanitary napkins to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to exempt the taxes levied on the product and make it free of cost
Goyal also said that the GST council has cleared 46 amendments which will be passed in Parliament. “Besides revenue collection, the GST council will now focus on job creation as well,” Goyal said.
GST on 17 items used by middle class viz paints, refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, storage water heaters, TVs up to 68 cm, mixer grinder, perfumes, cosmetics, shavers, vacuum was reduced from 28 to 18%. GST on washing machine reduced from 28% to 18%.
Tax rates on worked up Kota stone, sand stone and similar quality of local stones were cut from 18 to 12%, with the purpose of avoiding classification disputes. GST on handbags, jewellery box, wooden box for paintings, art-ware of glass, stone endeavour, ornamental framed mirrors, handmade lamps etc, reduced to 12%.