Traders' Body CAIT writes to Sitharaman, seeks ban on Amazon and Flipkart festive sale

NEW DELHI:  The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) on Wednesday wrote a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman seeking either a ban on seasonal festive sales offered by Amazon and Flipkart or appointment of a " Special Task Force" to monitor the sales over avoidance of GST & Income Tax during the period.

Flipkart has declared to hold a festival Sale between 16-21 October whereas Amazon is holding its Festival Sale from 17th October. During the 5-6 day period, goods listed at Amazon and Flipkart are discounted by up to 80 per cent.

"Goods are being sold at a much lesser price than the actual price by offering deep discounts from 10% to 80% which is nothing but a predatory pricing and the GST which is supposed to be charged on the actual market price of the commodity in normal case will be charged on the price after deducting the discounts offered and this is nothing but underpricing of the commodity by these e commerce portals thereby causing huge loss of GST revenue to the Government," CAIT national general secretary Praveen Khandelwal wrote in the letter.

The letter to FM comes at a time when Competition Commission of India (CCI) has appealed in the Supreme Court against the Karnataka High Court's interim stay on an investigation that CCI had ordered against them for anti-business practices earlier this year.

Festive season sale is a very big deal for Amazon and Flipkart. Just last year, the two giants of Indian e-commerce industry sold a record Rs 19,000 crore of goods, a growth of 30 per cent over 2018 figures, according to a Redseer report.

E-commerce companies in the past have said that it is the sellers on their platform who decide pricing and their primary work is to connect them with buyers.