Association demands action against builders enriching themselves under the guise of GST

In its budget recommendations to the Finance Ministry, the Forum for People’s Collective Efforts (FPCE), a not-for-profit organisation, has suggested that the Anti Profiteering Authority needs to take stern action against those builders, who are ‘enriching themselves’ under the ‘guise of GST’, causing loss to home buyers. It also requested the ministry to allow deduction of EMI from total income for assessing tax, in case a person is also paying rent, due to the failure of developers in giving timely delivery of flats. The FPCE, which is working for the cause of home buyers, said the double burden of Equated Monthly Installment (EMI) and rent, is breaking the backbone of home buyers, for no fault of theirs. “In case, where the assessee is paying both, EMI and rent, and the date for scheduled handover of possession has passed, there should be deduction of EMI paid from the total income of such assesse, over and above any other deduction being currently provided,” FPCE president Abhay Upadhyay said, in the letter dated January 9, 2018, to finance minister Arun Jaitley. He also pitched for enhancement of house rent allowance to the higher of ‘either the actual rent paid or the allowance received’ in order to incentivise the salaried class, who have been the ‘most honest tax payers’ of the country.