Last Man in Tower

 

Aravind Adiga's "Last Man in Tower" is a story about desperate people - desperate lower middle class people wanting to go up in society, wanting the riches, dreaming of a rich future and to achieve that they will throw all the scruples to the wind. Its a story of a old middle class metropolitan housing society in a suburb of Mumbai. The building is old, needs urgent repairs, the residents are all middle class with aspirations for more. In comes a corrupt, wealthy, ruthless builder who offers more than the market price for each flat in the society. Everybody agrees but for a couple of residents - old couple Pintos whose children are abroad and a widower Masterji a retired teacher whose only son is residing in a posh swanky flat in South Mumbai. He is a principled man with lots of attachment to the flat because of his late wife and daughter. He digs his heels in and refuses to accept the lucrative offer, the other residents get desperate because of the impending deadline, while the builder is sweating because of the potential loss of his reputation, when other builders are ready to pounce upon the property. The book is too long, but the narrative is quite brilliant. Aravind Adiga has written beautifully, his prose is superb. Towards the later part of the book, it starts getting depressing and the ending is a huge anti climax. Reminded me of the 80s movie "Mohan Joshi Haazir Ho" a sort of similar story about house owners who are unable to vacate their tenants and the matter goes to courts and stays there for decades, while the lawyers start getting rich, the plaintiffs become poorer and poorer by the day.  

GST on complex, building, flat etc.

Ministry of Finance press release dated 8th December, 2018

It is brought to the notice of buyers of constructed property that there is no GST on sale of complex/ building and ready to move-in flats where sale takes place after issue of completion certificate by the competent authority. GST is applicable on sale of under construction property or ready to move-in flats where completion certificate has not been issued at the time of sale.

   Effective rate of tax and credit available to the builders for payment of tax are summarized in the table for pre-GST and GST regime.

Period	Output Tax Rate	Input Tax Credit details		Effective Rate of Tax
Pre- GST	Service Tax: 4.5% VAT: 1% to 5% (composition scheme)	Central Excise on most of the construction materials: 12.5% VAT: 12.5 to 14.5% Entry Tax: Yes	No input tax credit (ITC) of VAT and Central Excise duty paid on inputs was available to the builder for payment of output tax, hence it got embedded in the value of properties. Considering that goods constitute approximately 45% of the value, embedded ITC was approximately 10- 12%.	Effective pre-GST tax incidence: 15- 18%
GST	Affordable housing segment: 8%, Other segment: 12% after 1/3rdabatement of value of land	Major construction materials, capital goods and input services used for construction of flats, houses, etc. attract GST of 18% or more.	ITC available and weighted average of ITC incidence is approximately 8 to10%.	Effective GST incidence, for affordable segment and for other segment has not increased as compared to pre- GST regime.

   

Housing projects in the affordable segment such as Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, Rajiv Awas Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana or any other housing scheme of State Government etc., attract GST of 8%. For such projects, after offsetting input tax credit, the builder or developer in most cases will not be required to pay GST in cash as the builder would have enough ITC in his books of account to pay the output GST.

  For projects other than affordable segment, it is expected that the cost of the complex/ buildings/ flats would not have gone up due to implementation of GST. Builders are also required to pass on the benefits of lower tax burden to the buyers of property by way of reduced prices/ installments, where effective tax rate has been dow