Goods and Services Tax (GST SSRs)

The government of India has adopted a Goods and Services Tax (GST) implemented on 01JUL17. GST is a tax which will merge many individually applied taxes into a single tax. It is a comprehensive indirect tax on manufacture, sale and consumption of goods and services throughout India.

Travel is categorized as “Goods and Services.” The GST is applicable to all itineraries for travel wholly within India and flights originating in India to international destinations. The GST is not applicable on international flights to India or Indian domestic connections from such flights.

By Indian law, it is mandatory for the validating carrier to collect the GST data for all applicable travel paid for by a business with a registered GST Number. The industry has introduced four standard SSRs to communicate GST data to the validating carrier where required. These SSRs are:

• GSTN - Goods and Services Tax Number
• GSTA - Goods and Services Tax Business Address
• GSTP - Goods and Services Tax Business Phone Number(s)
• GSTE - Goods and Services Tax Business Email

This functionality was implemented in Price and Book for ACH in Universal API Release 17.3.1, and in modify and retrieve in 17.4. For Galileo, Apollo, and Worldspan, the Price, Book, Modify, and Retrieve was implemented in Universal API Release 17.4. Release 17.4

ACH

For ACH LCCs:

• The GST SSRs can be sent at price, book and modify.
  • IndiGo (6E) is the first ACH carrier to support the GST tax at price and book. IndiGo ignores the GST tax at modify.

  • In IndiGo (6E), send GST SSRs in both AirCreateReservationReq and AirPriceReq, if you are sending in either of them. Otherwise, if you send in one request without sending in the other, it causes an amount mismatch.

  • Booking traveler and air segment reference is not supported by ACH for GST SSRs.
• In UniversalRecordModifyReq AirAdd:
  •  The GST SSRs can be sent in the SSR element.
  • GST SSRs are returned in UniversalRecordModifyRsp/UniversalRecord/SSR.
• The GST SSRs are saved in the Universal Record.
• In UniversalRecordRetrieve, the GST SSRs saved in the Universal Record (UR) will be returned in the response.

• The use of special characters, such as $, &, @, etc., in name or company fields, in GSTN or GSTA, results in booking failures. To avoid an error response, for example, use "AND" instead of "&" symbol when booking.

Galileo, Apollo, Worldspan

For ATPCO carriers, these SSRs are manual (non-programmatic) SSRs and can be sent at book and modify. Segment reference is not supported.

• In AirCreateReservartionReq:

  • The GST SSRs can be sent in the SSR element or in the BookingTraveler/SSR element.

  • GST SSRs are returned in AirCreateReservationRsp/UniversalRecord/SSR or BookingTraveler/SSR.

• In UniversalRecordModifyReq AirAdd:
  • The GST SSRs can be sent in the SSR element.
  • GST SSRs are returned in UniversalRecordModifyRsp/UniversalRecord/SSR.
• The GST SSRs are saved in the Universal Record.
• In UniversalRecordRetrieve, the GST SSRs returned in the retrieve response are synched with the Universal Record.