Ample investment still remains in real estate: CA Sandeep Jotwani
| Date :23-May-2019 |
Business Bureau:
“The Indian economy underwent a major change with the introduction of two laws in the year 2017 – GST and RERA,” said CA Sandeep Jotwani, Past Chairman of Nagpur Branch of ICAI while speaking as a chief guest on a half- day seminar on ‘GST on real estate and recent developments in RERA’ organised by Nagpur Branch of ICAI. CA Jotwani pointed out that the business community while passing through rigors of demonetisation; for builders RERA was introduced and immediately thereafter on July 1, 2017, GST Act was made applicable. Many thought that date of the respective Act’s would be extended but these Acts were implemented on the same date as announced. He pointed that whenever a new Act or a new Law is implemented, it is the chartered accountant community who is looked upon to understand, interpret and get the provisions and procedures complied.
“Nowadays for a CA only being an expert in either Income-Tax or GST is not enough; a reasonable understanding of all the other laws and Acts is equally important to provide quality consultancy to the clients,” he said. He said, “Time has come when CA as professionals should get ready for artificial intelligence taking over their routine jobs where major compliances will be performed by software itself, and therefore they need to prepare themselves for it and specialise in audit and providing consultancy apart from routine work.”
Jotwani said, “Even today 47% of the Indian investment remains parked in the real estate in spite of this sector facing so many challenges and therefore introduction of RERA was very important. With introduction of RERA, big opportunity as well as responsibility is given in the hands of CAs.” He said, “Government is working very hard to push up the economy and the real estate sector with the reduction in rates of GST for real estate sector. It is pertinent that ultimate benefit of the reduction in tax rate should be passed on to the ultimate consumer.” He pointed that although GST rates have been reduced to 1% or 5% but the tax rates on inputs still continues to be 5%, 12% 18% and 28% for builders of which ITC is not available it forms part of cost of builder.
“CA community is being looked upon for giving proper advise by the real estate industry,” said CA Suren Duragkar, Chairman, Nagpur Branch of ICAI. The changes in law and new notifications and circulars in the laws like RERA and GST are very frequent and to update members regarding the changes Nagpur Branch is continuously organising seminars for the benefit of members. CA Vishal Poddar from Nashik explained very lucidly provisions regarding GST on builders and real estate. CA Chaitra Salankar from Nagpur gave a presentation on recent developments in RERA. The programme was coordinated by CA Saket Bagdia, Secretary of Nagpur Branch. Present were CA Kirit Kalyani, Vice-Chairman, CA Jitendra Saglani, Treasurer, CA Harish Rangwani, Study Circle Chairman, CA Julfesh Shah, CA Satish Sarda, CA Hemant Rajandekar and others.