Buying a car in India has become a costly affair. It’s not just about the price tag you see at the showroom, the taxes will leave you stunned. A LinkedIn post by chartered accountant, Arvind C Thomas, is going viral for revealing how much of a car’s price actually goes and the numbers are hard to ignore.
In his post, Thomas broke down the bill of a Hyundai Creta top model car worth Rs 12.91 lakh and found that nearly Rs 6 lakh of it was just taxes. That’s almost half the total cost. His post has struck a chord with many middle-class buyers who feel the pinch of hidden costs that make car ownership harder than ever.
He wrote, “I recently came across an invoice for a Hyundai Creta (top variant) and this is what caught my eye: Actual cost of the car: Rs 12.91 lakhs, discount: Rs 11,000 and taxable amount: Rs 12.80 lakhs.”
Thomas’s breakdown revealed the extent of taxation, which includes a 28% Goods and Services Tax (GST) amounting to Rs 3.58 lakh, a 17% Compensation Cess of Rs 2.17 lakh, and a 1% Tax Collected at Source (TCS) charge of Rs 18,573. However, this amount does not include road tax, registration charges, insurance, or future fuel costs, he added.
Thomas in his post, raised a question, “Are we buying a car or just helping the government fill its coffers?” He pointed out that such high taxes turn a basic need like a car into a luxury item. For many middle-class families, upgrading or buying a new car now feels like a huge financial burden.
“With taxes this high, upgrading a vehicle feels more like a luxury than a necessity,” he wrote. “The middle class keeps paying silently, and no one bats an eye. Maybe it’s time we start talking about this,” he concluded.
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