The Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR) has said that accommodation and restaurant services provided within premises of Hotel to employees and guests of special economic zone (SEZ) developers or units will not be treated as ‘zero-rated’ supplies and therefore will be taxable under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. In an application filed before the Karnataka bench of the AAR, the applicant had sought to clarify whether hotel accommodation and restaurant services provided by them, within the premises of the hotel, to the employees and guests of SEZ units be treated as supply of goods and services.
In the earlier service tax regime, the law provided that only services which are labelled as authorised operation will be treated as zero-rated supply to the SEZ. Such operations included supply of machinery, contractor, among others. Experts said that GST laws did not specify which goods and services would be considered as authorised operations which created confusion about their taxability.
Section 16 of the Integrated GST (IGST) Act, supply of goods or services or both to a SEZ developer or unit are treated as ‘zero-rated supply’. Besides, Section 12 of the IGST Act defines the ‘place of supply’ of services by way of lodging accommodation by a hotel or for providing restaurant and catering services as the location where the services are actually performed. In the instant case, the applicant is located outside the SEZ. Therefore, the services rendered by the applicant are neither the part of authorised operations nor consumed inside the SEZ.
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