Changes in GST from the 23rd GST council meeting

At the 23rd GST council meeting, the council came up with a range of new decisions which will ease taxpayers’ compliance issues. It will also reduce the burden on taxpayers. They also decided to make changes in GST rates of some goods.

PM Modi added, “Jan Bhagidari is at the core of our working”. All our decisions are people-inspired, people-centric and people-friendly. We are working tirelessly for India’s economic growth through Goods and services tax(GST)

In the last 3 meetings, we have been looking at the 28% tax rate to rationalize the items to a lower tax bracket, said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley after the 23rd meeting of the council.

Sushil Kumar Modi Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar said, “There was unanimity that in 28% category there should be only sin and demerit goods”.

Sushil Kumar Modi termed the GST Council’s new range of decision as “historic”.

The recommendations from the 23rd GST council meeting held at Guwahati on 10th November 2017 are given below:

Filing of returns to be simplified

• Taxpayers should file the returns on Form GSTR-3B with the payment of tax by 20th of every month till March 2018.
• Filing of form GSTR-2 and GSTR-3 suspended from the current financial year. However, filing of GSTR-1 will continue for the entire period.
• Taxpayers will be divided into two categories for filling of details in the Form GSTR-1. They are:
  1. Taxpayers with annual turnover upto or below Rs.1.5 crore need to file GSTR-1 on a quarterly basis as per following dates:

1. Taxpayers with annual turnover more than Rs.1.5 crore need to file GSTR-1 on a monthly basis as per following dates:

• Facility for the manual filing of the application for the advance ruling introduced for the time being.

Penalties reduced

• A large number of taxpayers were unable to file their returns in Form GSTR-3B within the due date of July, August, and September 2017. Late fee waived in all such cases. It has been decided that where such a late fee was paid, it will be re-credited to their Electronic Cash Ledger under “Tax” head instead of “Fee” head so as to enable them to use that amount for the discharge of their future tax liabilities. The software changes for this would be made and thereafter this decision will be implemented.
• For the succeeding months i.e. October 2017 onwards, the amount of late payable by a taxpayer whose tax liability for that month was “NIL” will be Rs.20 per day (Rs. 10 per day each if it is under CGST AND SGST Acts). Earlier it was Rs.200 per day(Rs. 100 per day each if it is under CGST AND SGST Acts).

Composition scheme

• Threshold limit for composition scheme to be increased to Rs.1.5 crores.
• Uniform GST rate of 1% applicable for traders and manufacturers.
• Composition dealers will not have any inter-state taxes and input tax credit.
• Supply of services up to Rs. 5 lakhs per annum for the taxpayers registered under the GST Composition Scheme.

Further benefits for service providers

• Exports of services to Nepal and Bhutan exempted from GST. It has now been decided that such exporters will also be eligible for claiming Input Tax Credit in respect of goods or services used for effecting such exempt supply of services to Nepal and Bhutan.
• In an earlier meeting of the GST Council, it was decided to exempt those service providers whose annual turnover is less than Rs. 20 lakhs (Rs. 10 lakhs in special category states except for J &K).
• They are exempted from obtaining registration even if they are making inter-State taxable supplies of services. As a further measure towards taxpayer facilitation, it has been decided to exempt such suppliers providing services through an e-commerce platform from obtaining compulsory registration. As a result, all service providers, whether supplying intra-State, inter-State or through e-commerce operators, will be exempt
  from obtaining GST registration, provided their aggregate turnover does not exceed Rs. 20 lakhs (Rs.10 lakhs in special category States except for J & K).

Extension of due dates