Consideration of bringing online food delivery app under GST

MUMBAI: Online food delivery may become more expensive in the coming days and consumers will have to be prepared to pay more. The committee's fitment panel has recommended bringing the food delivery app under the purview of at least 5 per cent and this will be considered at the GST Council meeting next Friday. If this becomes possible, it will be more expensive to order food from Swiggy-Zomato.

The loss is estimated to be around Rs 5,000 crore in 2015-20 and 2020-21. In these circumstances, the fitment committee has recommended to put the food aggregator in the category of e-commerce operator and levy GST from the restaurant. It is learned that many restaurants do not pay GST to the government and some have not even registered.

GST officials have noticed a discrepancy of crores of rupees in the GSTR-3B form of many small restaurants and their business in the GSTR-3 form filled by Swiggy or Zomato.

In addition, there are many cases where taxes are levied but not paid to the government. According to the Fitness Committee's estimates, taxable income of about Rs 15,000 crore was not shown in 2016-2017 and 2020-21, resulting in an estimated loss of Rs 5,000 crore.