On Monday BEL declared that it could not refund the GST charged for electricity used before July first but tonight that has been reversed. Today the Ministry of Finance issued a release saying that it has reached an agreement with BEL and the utility will refund GST paid for electricity consumed before July first. The refund will be given as a credit to your next bill.
While it's a relief for consumers, it's a real headache for BEL which has to calculate and pro-rate the GST on tens of thousands of bills and then subtract that figure from the new bills. All this after the company was making the charge based on an expressed, written directive from the Sales Tax Office.
So tonight, the final and formal position is GST on light bills is: pay the bills with the GST and you'll get the GST amount, subtracted from next month's bill.
