5 per cent GST on eating out from today! Nearly 200 items become cheaper

Mumbai: After months of bitterness over the high GST rate on food in restaurants, eating out is finally going to taste better from Wednesday!

Reason? The 18 per cent GST you paid all this while on food served in restaurants has been brought down to 5 per cent by the GST Council last week.

A uniform 5 per cent tax will now be levied on all kinds of food served in both AC and non AC restaurants. Alcohol still continues to be outside the ambit of GST and will attract regular VAT as earlier.

The GST Council, last week, in a major tax overhaul also slashed the rates on nearly 200 items that were placed in the topmost 28 per cent slab under the new indirect tax reform. Wednesday onwards, here’s what will get cheaper:

28 per cent to 18 per cent

• Liquid soaps, Detergents, washing and cleaning preparations
• Cosmetics and deodorants, including Shampoos; Hair cream, Hair dyes (natural, herbal or synthetic) and similar other goods; henna powder or paste, not mixed with any other ingredient; Pre-shave, shaving or after-shave preparations, personal deodorants, bath preparations, perfumery, cosmetic or toilet preparations, room deodorisers
• Wire, cables, insulated conductors, electrical insulators, electrical plugs, switches, sockets, fuses, relays, electrical connectors
• Electrical boards, panels, consoles, cabinets etc for electric control or distribution
• Furniture, mattress, bedding and similar furnishing
• Trunk, suitcase, vanity cases, brief cases, travelling bags and other hand bags, cases
• Primary cell and primary batteries
• Sanitary ware and parts thereof of all kind
• Articles of plastic, floor covering, baths, shower, sinks, washbasins, seats, sanitary ware of plastic
• Slabs and goods of marbles and granite, ceramic tiles of all kinds
• Miscellaneous articles such as vacuum flasks, lighters,
• Wrist watches, clocks, watch movement, watch cases, straps, parts
• Articles of apparel and clothing accessories of leather, guts, furskin, artificial fur and other articles such as saddlery and harness for any animal
• Articles of cutlery, stoves, cookers and similar non electric domestic appliances
• Razor and razor blades
• Multi-functional printers, cartridges
• Office or desk equipment
• Door, windows and frames of aluminium.
• Articles of plaster such as board, sheet,
• Articles of cement or concrete or stone and artificial stone,
• Articles of asphalt or slate,
• Articles of mica
• Ceramic flooring blocks, pipes, conduit, pipe fitting
• Wall paper and wall covering
• Glass of all kinds and articles thereof such as mirror, safety glass, sheets, glassware
• Electrical, electronic weighing machinery
• Fire extinguishers and fire extinguishing charge
• Fork lifts, lifting and handling equipment,
• Bull dozers, excavators, loaders, road rollers,
• Earth moving and levelling machinery,
• Escalators,
• Cooling towers, pressure vessels, reactors
• Crankshaft for sewing machine, tailor’s dummies, bearing housings, gears and gearing; ball or roller screws; gaskets
• Electrical apparatus for radio and television broadcasting
• Sound recording or reproducing apparatus
• Signalling, safety or traffic control equipment for transports
• Physical exercise equipment, festival and carnival equipment, swings, shooting galleries, roundabouts, gymnastic and athletic equipment
• All musical instruments and their parts
• Artificial flowers, foliage and artificial fruits
• Explosive, anti-knocking preparation, fireworks
• Cocoa butter, fat, oil powder,
• Extract, essence ad concentrates of coffee, miscellaneous food preparations
• Chocolates, Chewing gum / bubble gum
• Malt extract and food preparations of flour, groats, meal, starch or malt extract
• Waffles and wafers coated with chocolate or containing chocolate
• Rubber tubes and miscellaneous articles of rubber
• Goggles, binoculars, telescope,
• Cinematographic cameras and projectors, image projector,
• Microscope, specified laboratory equipment, specified scientific equipment such as for meteorology, hydrology, oceanography, geology
• Solvent, thinners, hydraulic fluids, anti-freezing preparation

28 per cent to 12 per cent:

• Wet grinders consisting of stone as grinder
• Tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles

18 per cent to 12 per cent:

• Condensed milk
• Refined sugar and sugar cubes
• Pasta
• Curry paste, mayonnaise and salad dressings, mixed condiments and mixed seasoning
• Diabetic food
• Medicinal grade oxygen
• Printing ink
• Hand bags and shopping bags of jute and cotton
• Hats (knitted or crocheted)
• Parts of specified agricultural, horticultural, forestry, harvesting or threshing machinery
• Specified parts of sewing machine
• Spectacles frames
• Furniture wholly made of bamboo or cane

18 per cent to 5 per cent

• Puffed rice chikki, peanut chikki, sesame chikki, revdi, tilrevdi, khaza, kazuali, groundnut sweets gatta, kuliya
• Flour of potatoes put up in unit container bearing a brand name
• Chutney powder
• Fly ash
• Sulphur recovered in refining of crude
• Fly ash aggregate with 90% or more fly ash content

12 per cent to 5 per cent

• Desiccated coconut
• Narrow woven fabric including cotton newar [with no refund of unutilised input tax credit]
• Idli, dosa batter
• Finished leather, chamois and composition leather
• Coir cordage and ropes, jute twine, coir products
• Fishing net and fishing hooks
• Worn clothing
• Fly ash brick

5 per cent to nil

• Guar meal
• Hop cone (other than grounded, powdered or in pellet form)
• Certain dried vegetables such as sweet potatoes, maniac
• Unworked coconut shell
• Fish frozen or dried (not put up in unit container bearing a brand name)
• Khandsari sugar