Friday, June 21, 2013

Commodity transaction tax to be levied from July 1

Commodities Transaction Tax (CTT) will be levied at 0.01 per cent and would be paid by the seller on various non-agricultural commodities, including gold, sugar and edible oils, with effect from July 1. This was announced in the 2013-14 Budget speech.

23 agricultural commodities, including wheat, barley, chana, cotton and potato, would be exempted from the levy.

The tax would be levied on futures trading and not on spot trading in the commodities. Besides gold, silver, crude oil and base metals, processed farm items like sugar, soya oil and guar gum will come under CTT. Coriander, cardamom and guar seed is also out of CTT.

According to sources, the implementation of CTT has been delayed as there has been consultations between the stakeholders and the Finance Ministry over the list of non-agri commodities to be brought under the ambit of CTT.

Exchanges and brokers are of the view that CTT would discourage day traders and speculators, resulting in a big drop in business of five national bourses.

There are 22 commodity bourses in the country, of which six of them operate at national level. The combined turnover of these bourses stood at Rs 1,70,46,840 crore in 2012-13, down by six per cent from the previous fiscal. Of the total turnover, more than 80 per cent comes from non-agricultural commodities.

No comments:

Post a Comment