Treatment of Reimbursement of expenses under GST (The case of Pure Agent)
General Rule: Value of supply of services includes reimbursement of expenses.
Exception: Pure Agent
Meaning of “Pure Agent”
a) Enters into a contractual agreement with the recipient of supply to act as his pure agent to incur expenditure or costs in the course of supply of goods or services or both;
b) Neither intends to hold nor holds any title to the goods or services or both so procured or supplied as pure agent of the recipient of supply;
c) Does not use for his own interest such goods or services so procured; and
d) Receives only the actual amount incurred to procure such goods or services in addition to the amount received for supply he provides on his own account.
Rule 33: Value of Supply of Services in case of Pure Agent
The expenditure or costs incurred by a supplier as a pure agent of the recipient of supply shall be excluded from the value of supply, if all the following conditions are satisfied, namely,-
- the supplier acts as a pure agent of the recipient of the supply, when he makes the payment to the third party on authorisation by such recipient
- the payment made by the pure agent on behalf of the recipient of supply has been separately indicated in the invoice issued by the pure agent to the recipient of service; and
- the supplies procured by the pure agent from the third party as a pure agent of the recipient of supply are in addition to the services he supplies on his own account.
Examples:
- Corporate services firm A is engaged to handle the legal work pertaining to the incorporation of Company B. Other than its service fees, A also recovers from B, registration fee and approval fee for the name of the company paid to the Registrar of Companies. The fees charged by the Registrar of Companies for the registration and approval of the name are compulsorily levied on B. A is merely acting as a pure agent in the payment of those fees. Therefore, A‘s recovery of such expenses is a disbursement and not part of the value of supply made by A to B.
- Ticket in railways is booked by a travel agent on behalf of the customer and the charges for such ticket are recovered by the agent along with the commission by showing them separately.
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