Latest Amendments in GST Council in 22nd meeting held on 6th Oct 2017
Council has taken many positive decisions in this meeting and in the long run it will benefit the business and businessmen through Latest Amendments in GST Council in 22nd meeting held on 6th Oct 2017. It will also take away difficulties faced by Business people SME’s who were earlier more involved in compliance of Indirect Tax and were not able to concentrate on their business.
I welcome the following steps taken by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with team of all council members:
Composite scheme to be extended to taxpayers having aggregate annual turnover upto Rs. 1 crore. Also increasing the threshold of turnover for special category States, (except J & K and Uttarakhand) to Rs. 75 Lakhs. small traders and manufacturers to register under composite scheme really get benefited from this . Also including supply of exempt services to be allowed to be registered under Composite Scheme is an extra benefit given. This will help lots of SME’s to register under this scheme.
Exempt interstate supplies to be registered up to aggregate turnover of Rs. 20 Lakhs. This is a great relief for professionals as well as well as SME’s who were earlier required to be registered under regular scheme now need not register till turnover reaches Rs. 20 Lakhs. A small professional whose turnover is less then Rs. 20 lakhs had to get registered under GST if he was making any interstate supply of services. Now they will be out from it and will not have to charge tax till the threshold limit of Rs, 20 lakhs and will not be liable to file returns etc.
Posponement of Reverse Charge Mechanism u/s 9(4) of CGST and section 5 of IGST till 31st March 2018 will be taken very positively by the business community. It will reduce lot of compliance cost.
Facilitate filing of quarterly returns for small and medium businesses with annual aggregate turnover of Rs. 1.50 crore will help businesses to concentrate on their business instead of giving more time to compliance.
Not making payment of GST on Advances. Another milestone for small businesses with annual aggregate turnover of Rs. 1.50 crore
Services provided to an unregistered person shall be exempted from GST. This will enable small unregistered traders in movement of goods who were facing hardships due to refusal to move goods by GTA (Goods Transport Agencies).
Postponement of eway bill till 31st March 2018 but starting in phased manner from 1st Jan 2018. This will help businesses to implement GSt in a better manner.
Postponement of return filing date for composition dealer and ISD to 15th Nov 2017 for the quarter ending 30th Sept 2017.
Registration of TDS / TCS provisions to be postponed till 31st March 2018. This will help to small ecommerce suppliers who were required to be registered under GST even if they made a single supply through ecommerce platform.
Major relief to exporters by committing to a date for release of refunds for July & Aug 2017. Merchant exporters to pay only 0.1% for procuring supplies from domestic suppliers for exports. E-wallet to start from 1st April 2018 which will be credited with notional amount enabling exporters to use the same for payment of IGST/GST. It will be like a temporary refund. This will help exporters to come out of the burden of increased working capital requirement and become more competitive by reducing costs towards interest on borrowed capital for Taxes.
Reducing tax on sale of duty credit scrips form %5 to Nil will help importers in purchasing them at better rates and be able to compete in the market.
Reducing taxes on many commodities will help in the long run to collect more taxes and transparency by business man to declare their supplies and pay taxes, thus, government also collecting more tax.
Overall I feel the proposals by the council are very much in favour of SME’s and MSME’s and will help in implementing GST in a much better way.
