I'll put some facts right. An SUV is not everything the manufacturers call with 'SUV' in the name. Tax rules have specifications regarding what makes a car what. See this:
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An SUV is a car which has a length > 4m ; engine >1500 cc; ground clearance > 170 mm. Which means none of the sub 4m compact SUVs branded and sold in India does not qualify as an SUV in taxation specifications.
All sub 4m cars with petrol engines < 1200cc and diesel engines < 1500cc are small cars in india. Which is why most sub 4m cars have 1198cc petrol engine and 1498cc diesel engine. The 1498cc Ti-VCT petrol Ecosport is not a small car but neither an SUV! It will be classified as a large car(though large car and SUV has same cess).
So coming to the point, Nexon prices will not be affected by this as you mentioned. Here I'm also posting what the GST Council has said today:
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What they have decided is to raise the
maximum ceiling of cess on motor vehicles from the present 15% to 25%. They have not explicitly mentioned in which all types of vehicles this will be implemented. But as we can assume, small cars having 1% and 3% cess are likely to be untouched. All the other category vehicles having 15% will be what is upgraded to 25% but with the exception of hybrid vehicles likely.
Hybrid vehicles might be retained at 15% thus effectively making their cess lower than other more polluting vehicles.
And I do not understand the rationale behind 0% GST for unbranded cars. GST is not based on brand, but on if the entity is a motor vehicle to be used on Indian roads or not, whether made in a high end factory or in your backyard.
Yes, this is poor show from the top most officials, highly 'educated' and 'experienced'. GST isn't done as a school project by a kid, is it ?
That is not the concept. An expensive thing is taxed higher not just because it is bad, but because of the simple logic that someone who has the luxury of buying a high end car should more taxes than someone buying a small car to meet his/her basic necessities. Just like income tax works.
Also, it's high time this < 4m and > 4m thing ends in India! A car's luxury level should not be assessed based on it's length. Even if they have to look at a dimension to fix this, the width would be a better indicator than the length. Not that even that is all right. The right way is to judge based on engine capacity, seating capacity and price. This would end the all so sad phenomenon of our manufacturers being forced to cramp cars into 4m length! Thus we can make much better cars from the common man at like around 4.25m, tax them lower and tax higher capacity 'luxury' cars at a higher rate. They could have also kept adding cess for like every million increase in price of a car if they wanted to increase their revenue! A 10 lakhs rupees non small car and a 2 crore rupees luxury car has only the same cess of 15%!