Goods and Services Tax(GST) - Lesser talktime, higher phone bills under GST regime effective from Saturday July 01,2017

Mobile phone bills are expected to go up while recharges would yeild less talktime for prepaid customers from Saturday onwards under the new GST tax regime.

Under the Goods and Services Tax (GST), telecom services would be taxed at 18 percent compared to 15 percent currently.

This means that a user would get a talktime of about Rs 80 on a recharge of Rs 100, compared to about Rs 83 earlier.

Similarly, costs for postpaid users would also go up to the extent of three percentage points. So, for a monthly usage of Rs 1,000, users will have to pay Rs 1,180 instead of Rs 1,150 currently.