Three days after the GST made its debut in the country, many supermarkets and restaurants were still found to be billing customers under the old tax regime. While some of them cited confusion and lack of preparedness as the reason, others sought time to implement it.
For example, a bar and restaurant as well as a vegetarian restaurant in Vasanthnagar are yet to implement GST. “We will do it from next week,” said Sharath, manager of a popular bar and restaurant.
But another restaurant in the same area has already updated its billing system with new rates. Nooruddin, the manager, showed one of the bills and said: “You can see that the old taxes have been replaced with new GST rates. There has been no trouble with tax implementation. Also, most of the prices of items have remained, so we have had no problem,” he said.
For smaller supermarkets, the devil is in the detail. With multiple categories of commodities being billed at once, they were ill-prepared to implement the new tax rates as soon as it was introduced. An employee of a supermarket in Wilson Garden said: “As there are many items available in the store, we are still working on updating their prices. It will be implemented today or tomorrow.”
Sebastian Cyril, manager of another supermarket, complained of having had little time: “Our servers haven’t been updated yet but it will be done in a day or two. As of now, we are using the old system of taxes to the dissatisfaction of some customers. We could have implemented it if there was proper notice. The GST was implemented in such a hurry.”
At the other end of the spectrum are customers, who have had to pick and choose stores that have implemented GST, as the prices of some items have gone down now. “When the government implements a change, shouldn’t people follow it?” said one such customer.
Another person was slightly more forgiving. “I understand that change takes time. It will happen gradually,” she said.
(With inputs from Arza Safiya and Manjusha Naik)
