Bring real estate under GST: Manish Sisodia to Arun Jaitley

Delhi Deputy Chief minister Manish Sisodia in New Delhi.

Delhi Finance Minister Manish Sisodia has urged his counterpart at the Centre, Arun Jaitley, to bring real estate under the ambit of GST. He noted that although the move will take “extraordinary political willpower”, real estate is a sector “where maximum amount of tax evasion takes place”.

Sisodia, in a letter to Jaitley Sunday, said, “Every recorded transaction will lead to tax input credit, check exorbitant hike in land prices, curb flow of black money… The entire chain will remain intact.”

Sisodia said in the primary step of real estate — sale or purchase of land — “we are seeing that not only in big cities and towns, but even in far-flung villages, those with black money are indulging in land hoarding, thereby illegally forcing genuine buyers to buy land at exorbitant rates… (in) purchase of raw material to work contract etc, it is widely prevalent that the work is done without paying little or no tax, and in this entire business, there is hardly a tax collection”.