GST: Colleges for fee hike

The higher education department is hopeful that the Centre will exempt education from GST in the first year and it will be taxed only from 2018.

Private educational institutions offering higher education and professional courses in the state want fees to be raised for the coming academic year once the new Goods and Services Tax is rolled out from July 1.

GST rates are expected to be finalised by May-end, but private institutions offering higher education and professional courses will not get tax exemption in the GST regime unlike at present, and this will result in a fee hike of up to 10 per cent, the managements say.

They say that GST exempts only institutions offering courses till Class XII; education services offered after Class XII will come under the tax net.

Private educational institutions offering higher education and professional courses want fees to be raised for the coming academic year once GST is rolled out from July 1.

The government revises the fee structure once in three years based on income, inflation and expenditure of institutions. The last revision was done in the academic year 2016-17, so the next revision is due for 2019-20. But institutions want a revision in the ensuing academic year (2017-18) itself, taking GST into consideration.

Colleges are debating the impact of GST and the different associations have decided to come under one umbrella to take up their case.

“Under the GST regime, any form of service provided by a higher educational institute will be taxed. Though the tax rate is yet to be finalised, there will be tax burden on institutions. The exact amount of the burden will be known in May when the GST Council will finalise the tax rate,” said Mr Ramesh Nimmatoori, chairman, consortium of Engineering and Professional College Managements' Association.

The higher education department is hopeful that the Centre will exempt education from GST in the first year of implementation and it will be taxed only from 2018.

“There are reports that education and healthcare will be exempted from GST this year. If that happens, there will be no burden on institutions this year. Clarity on this issue will come by May-end. Based on that, we can take a decision,” said an official in the higher education department.