A message on social media has been suggesting that separate bills could help save GST rates. The message has been doing the rounds for almost two weeks, and it explains that for shopping bills worth Rs. 1000 the GST rate would be 0%, for Rs. 1000-1500 would be 2.5%, 6% on Rs. 1500-2500 and 18% for bills in the range of Rs. 2500 - 4500.

The hoax-full message has only inspired a bunch of shoppers, at the expense of retailers who have been forced to split bills for customers. Ironically, the message has led to serpentine queues and additional time for processing bills at the check-out counters.

"Believing the message as true, consumers across the country are demanding that retailers split the bill amount in multiple bills for evading tax, resulting in long queues, wastage of paper and unnecessary hassles at billing counters," says Kumar Rajagopalan, the CEO at RAI.

The Retailers Association of India (RAI), is a body of 6,000 retailers that advocates retailer' demands across the country. Rajagopalan had exclusively spoken with Sify on June 14 and explained how GST would impact consumer behavior.

He had explained that splitting bills would only end up confusing customers. In fact back then, the industry had raised an objection to GST on packaged foods too. Read the article here

Rajagopalan further shares, "the slabs given in GST are based on individual product prices and not on total bill amount. Therefore, getting separate bills at supermarkets and hypermarkets will not help save tax."

GST mandates that supermarkets and retail stores display taxes on bills separately against individual line-items although tax-rates for individual products gets included in the final price. For example, a pack of shoes billed at Rs. 700 involves the tax component, but retailers as per the GST laws have to display the tax amount too on the bill.

RAI has written a letter to Arun Jaitley, the Finance Minister explaining the operational-concerns and seeking a work-around. Hasmukh Adhia, revenue secretary and Upender Gupta, the GST commissioner, have also been looped in the letter.

The letter suggests that the GST mandate of displaying tax-rates for every line item has confused customers about final prices. Customers are perceiving that they are paying higher rates for the products.

The letter signed by Rajagopalan also suggests that the industry could comply to the mandate by displaying a summary of taxes, as against showing it on a line. "We would be willing to work with the government to ensure compliance without sacrificing customer convenience," concedes the draft.

Whether the Finance Ministry relents to the RAI request is a different call. But until that occurs, demanding bills to be split will only get you a cold-stare rather than the rumored price-benefit.