Our company accountant (CA) is maintaining the company accounts. Our company provides laptops to all the employees who are all working from home. The company IT policy is applied to all the laptops to ensure it is used for office work only.
It has come to notice that this accountant was never claiming GST on all the laptops (even company assets) purchased. Is this correct? Why?
The accountant is incorrect for missing the GST claim. Because laptops are essential business assets used for official operations (enforced by a WFH IT policy) and are not subject to blocked credit restrictions under Section 17(5), the company is fully eligible to claim Input Tax Credit on the GST paid for purchasing them.
The accountant approach needs a second look, though one condition matters.
ITC on laptops is eligible under the standard GST credit chain as long as they are capitalized as fixed assets and used for making taxable supplies. Section 17(5) lists the BLOCKED credit categories: motor vehicles for personal use, food and beverages, health insurance, club memberships. Laptops provided for official work do not appear in this blocked list.
The key condition: if an employee uses the laptop partly for personal purposes, ITC must be reversed proportionally to the non-business use under Section 17(1). A written WFH IT policy restricting use to official work is your evidence that full ITC is valid. Without documentation, scrutiny could treat partial personal use as ineligible.
Practical steps:
This [GST compliance guide for Indian businesses](https://taxgarden.in/blog/gst-compliance-guide-india-2026-27) has the full Section 17(5) blocked category list and ITC eligibility conditions.
Does it make a difference if the company only has export sales to overseas customers, which are zero-rated for GST?
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