A month after GST: Customs GST director explains why there are price differences

Explaining further, he said some traders who do not want to claim from the Customs Department later, are simply passing the GST to their customers.

By doing this, the traders then charge 16 per cent tax on the products, resulting in higher price of the product.

“Price differences are mainly due to some of the traders who do not want to claim the special refund for stock on hand,” he said in a phone interview with Astro AWANI.

"It is probably because they find it even though the process is a bit easy, they say they need to pay the auditors to do stock verification, compliance cost so they take the easy way out by not claiming the special refund".

"What happens as a result of that is the traders apply 6 percent GST on top of sales tax. So it’ll be 10 plus 6.

'We believe it’s going to be temporary because once the new stock comes in there is no element of sales tax, whereas some other traders who wants to claim the special refund they discount the sales tax component, so they are able to sell at fairly cheaper prices," he said when contacted by Astro AWANI. Subromaniam promised to take stern action against errant traders.