By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JAN 18, 2018: ALTHOUGH it was a day-long fatigue-causing deliberation for the GST Council Members but a major chunk of time was consumed by the various presentations made by different Committee members, including Infosys chief Nandan Nilekani. Mr Nilekani made a detailed presentation in simplification of the GST return. Though nothing was decided by the Council but broad consensus was achieved in terms of continuing the present GSTR-3B and uploading of sale invoices. In his press briefing the Union Finance Minister, Mr Arun Jaitley, hinted that if the invoice-matching objective is achieved by such uploading, there would be changes in the business processes in the coming months.

On the tariff front, Mr Jaitley said that various Committees like the Sarna Committee on the Handicrafts items and other recommendations of the Fitment Committee, the Council decided to reduce the tax rate from 28 % on 29 goods and 53 Services. He admitted that although it may marginally impact the revenue collections but it would help certain sectors which employ a large number of persons. The new tax rates would be applicable from Jan 25, 2018. This means all the relevant Notifications would be issued before this.

For the first time Mr Jaitley expressed disappointment with the Composition Scheme taxpayers (about 17 lakh registered paid only about Rs 307 Crore) and the Council received several legislative changes to tighten the screw on such taxpayers. And one of the changes might be the extension of Section 9(4) of the CGST Act to such taxpayers. However, all such amendments would be discussed by the Council at its next meeting through video conferencing.

To overcome the dip in the revenue collections, since huge amount of money is parked in the IGST head, it was decided today that out of the total sum, about Rs 35000 Crore would provisionally be divided between the Centre and the States and a final view may be taken later.

To further address the issue of a dip in the revenue mop-up the FM said that the emphasis so far has been on voluntary compliance with no anti-evasion measure. But now, with the introduction of e-Way Bill, anti-evasion apparatus is being put in place. As many as 15 States today confirmed that they would be making e-Way Bill mandatory for even Intra-State movement of goods from Feb 1, 2018.

See PDF