Your phone and credit card bills for June could attract the Goods and Services Tax (GST) instead of service tax, depending on your billing cycle.

Though GST rolled out from July 1, services in the previous month could also attract the new levy based on the date of the bill.

“If the invoice was generated after June 30, it will attract GST. For services, the tax is levied based on the date of supply of service or issue of invoice,” a senior Finance Ministry official said on Friday.

At the second session of the GST ki MasterClass, the official said that service providers are mandated to provide an invoice within 30 days of the supply of service. As a relaxation for insurance and banking companies, the law allows them to issue an invoice within 45 days.

Further, four types of service providers, including insurers, banks, transporters and airlines don’t have to issue a separate invoice. The policy document from insurance firms, bank statement from banks and ticket from the airline will be considered as the invoice, Gupta said.

Transition stocks To clarify the prices of transition stocks, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia also urged firms to advertise any post-GST changes in newspapers.

“Our appeal is that issuing revised stickers with the new price is not difficult. It should be done at the earliest,” he said, adding that they should at least publicise it in newspapers.

Earlier this week, the government had given companies time till September 30 to sell unsold inventory from before the rollout of the GST by affixing an additional sticker to reflect any price change.

However, many companies have said that this may be difficult due to large inventories across the country.

On education Meanwhile, in a separate clarification, the Finance Ministry on Friday said that education will become cheaper with the GST and additionally some items such as school bags have now become cheaper.

“Services provided by an educational institution to students, faculty and staff are exempt,” it said, adding that there is no change in taxability of educational and other services on account of GST.

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