GST Profiteering- Is National Anti-Profiteering Authority an eye-wash or dedicated efforts

GST Profiteering- Is National Anti-Profiteering Authority an eye-wash or dedicated efforts

Couple of articles on the subject have been posted in this blog. One such article of relevance was written on 25th May 2018 with title as:

National Anti-Profiteering Authority- Is it really effective in handling complaints of profiteering

https://skvirmani-jagograhak.blogspot.com/2018/05/national-anti-profiteering-authority-is.html

There have been number of posts alleging profiteering by the industry post implementation of GST. I had also initially brought out a case where the restaurant had adopted to profiteering on the pretext of GST whereas the GST should have reduced the prices by around 10%. on the contrary, the restaurant had increased the prices by about 40 to 50% just immediately after GST. The reason of increase in prices just next day of GST implementation was cited as GST. No action has been taken by the National Anti-Profiteering Authority.

 
It is also a fact that the cases of profiteering may not get established as basically there is no law w.r.t the profit margin that can be capped and more so it is very difficult to track the increase in prices specially which are not of daily use item. 

 
A newspaper report in Navbharat Times dtd. 19/10/2018 has brought out a news that now the income tax department would look into the issue of profiteering by the industry. On the one side Govt feels that the industry is adapting to profiteering and is not passing on the benefit of price reduction and the other side gives a feeling that National Anti-Profiteering Authority also seems to have not been able to address the issue of profiteering. 

In my view this also seems to be making mockery of the public. First of all, is there any law which stipulates the %age of the profit except essential commodities or the amount on business expenditure that any business house is allowed to incur or hits discretion to increase the traders commission specially when its own house is not in order w.r.t petroleum products. Secondly under which law Income Tax Department can prosecute the business houses whose profits have increased after implementation of GST. In my view the Income Tax Department may be concerned only whether the assessee has paid all the taxes correctly or not. GST scheme itself is complicated beyond the understanding of ordinary consumers like me where even the CAs are finding it difficult on input tax credit, output tax, adjustments, composition scheme etc. More importantly, whether the Government has doubt that the National Anti-profiteering Authority would be able to discharge its statutory function. Members may kindly provide views for better understanding or is such a move another eye-wash specially when the Election 2019 are very near.