Highlights of 22nd GST Council Meeting dated 6th October 2017

Looking for the updates of the 22nd GST Council Meeting? Here are the most important ones. 

The Union finance minister Arun Jaitley with the team of all the council members has taken many positive steps in 22nd GST council meeting which would be beneficial to the business and businessmen. Following are the important steps taken in the meeting.

• GST Return filing for SMEs: The government has gone easy on small and medium businesses that have an annual turnover of 1.5 corers by facilitating them for filing their returns quarterly instead of monthly compliances. Quarterly filing compliances will start from October 1st. 

• • As per the decision of the 22nd GST council taxpayers with an annual turnover up to 1.5 corers will not have to pay GST on receipt of advances on account of supply of goods.

• Changes on Composition Schemes: The 22nd GST council has decided to form a Group of Ministers to ensure and examine measures to make the composition scheme more attractive to Small and MEdium enterprises. 

All the taxpayers having aggregate turnover upto Rs. 1 crore would now be eligible for composite schemes. Moreover, the aggregate turnover threshold for special category states has also been increased to 75 lacs which was earlier 50 lacs. Except for the state of Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand where the aggregate turnover threshold has been fixed at rs. 1 crore. This would boost a lot of small manufacturers and traders to register under the scheme.

A person providing any exempt services would now be eligible for registering under the composite scheme. 

The due date for filing GSTR 4 return for composition scheme dealers is extended to 15th November 2017 for the quarter July-September 2017.

• Big relief for the interstate suppliers as well as SMEs and service providers: The service provider with an aggregate annual turnover of 20 lacs are now exempted from the registration under the regular scheme which was not the case earlier.

This includes the service providers who provide their services interstate and has aggregated annual turnover of rs. 20 lacs.

The limit is 10 lacs in the case of states of special category except for the state of J & K.

• Implementation of certain bills and provisions postponed:

1. Implementation of E-Way bill date postponed: The E-Way bill rules which were earlier supposed to be implemented by December 2017, in the 22nd GST Council meeting it was decided to postpone the implementation of the same to 1st January 2018. The E-Way bill provisions shall be operationalized in a staggered manner from 1st January 2018 to 1st April 2018.
2. Implementation of TDS and TCS Provisions of the GST which is helpful for the taxpayer ecosystem gradually absorb the changes in the indirect tax regime, and which is applicable to certain Government departments and E-commerce operators. The registration and operationalization of the same have been postponed to 31st March 2018 as decided by the Government.

• Suspension of Reverse charge mechanism is postponed till 31st March 2018 which would help in cutting the compliance cost.

• The services provided by goods transport agencies to Unregistered persons shall be exempted from GST. This is a welcome move taken to remove the hardship faced by the unregistered businesses.

• For every exporter, an E-wallet will be introduced from April 2018 in which there will be the national amount of credit

Merchant exporters will pay only 0.1% GST amount for procuring supplies from domestic suppliers for exports.

The dates for a refund of cheques for July and August exports will be processed by October 10 and October 18 respectively. 

• Major changes in the GST rates of the following.

1. There would be a 35% GST rate on old leasing vehicles.
2. The GST rate of man-made yarn which will also have an effect on the textile industry was reduced from 18% to 12%.
3. GST rate on job work, printing job work, zari work, khakhra, and other namkeen and unbranded Ayurvedic medicines will now be 5% which was earlier 12%.
4. On Some stationery items, diesel, and engine parts GST was reduced to 18% which was earlier 28%.

Hope this article was helpful. Refer to the topics discussed in the 23rd GST council meeting

Source-  gstcouncil.gov.in