The Maharashtra Govt has finally announced reduction in excise duty on BIO wines and reduction in VAT on BIO wines from 25% to 20% and on domestic wines from 25% to 4% on 22nd July 2009

Note:
"The Maharashtra State has finally noted that due to high taxation, the BIO wine market was shrinking in size and reducing the revenue. This is a typical "Ambassador Syndrome" I call it Ambassador Syndrome because all babus in Govt are still allowed to use only Ambasaador car as official vehicle. They have not tasted the better cars introduced due to open market, which not only made better cars more affrodable and phased out Padmini and Ambassador, except for Govt. They now seem to realise that by protecting the domestic wine market by tariff barriers, they are actually depriving the consumers of better wines at affordable rates and since domestic wine producers can sell whatever they make due to artificial tariff barriers, they have no incentive to improve the quality and compete with BIO wines on quality terms.

I hope the new tax regime remains for a long time, though there is still a scope to reduce the VAT from 20% to 4% on par with domestic wines."

"I also hope that Goa, Delhi and Karnatka also follow the same taxation regime and reduce taxes in respective States"

Download the Tax Calculation Sheet from here

Ahuja