The 25th GST Council meeting, which met on Friday in Delhi to discuss among other things simplification of GST return-filing process, concluded a step short of doing so.
The issue of simplifying the three-form per quarter return filing procedure was taken up by the GST Council. A presentation by technocrat Nandan Nilekani was made before the Council comprising of state finance ministers.
"Both the Sushil Modi headed group of ministers and the IT group of the GST Council had been closely interacting with Nandan Nilekani and with Prakash Kumar, chairman, GST-N," said finance minister Arun Jaitley, who is the chairman of the GST Council, after the meeting.
Jaitley said that the proposals were discussed and would be formalised going ahead in ten days time. For now 3B return will continue along with supplier invoice uploading. "We could not take a final decision on them yet but we are in that direction," he said.
On the issue of E-Way bills introduction, he said that uploading of inter-sate Eway bills would become necessary after February 1. Almost 15 states have also agreed to put in place an Eway bill system to track inter-state movement of goods.
These states, too, would make it compulsory to have Eway bills from the same date. "Trade in transport needs to comply with restrictions of E-Way bills," Jaitley said adding that the government views Eway bills as a major deterrent for black money.
Among other things, the GST Council's fitment committee also rationalised rates on 29 goods items and on 53 service items. The GST Council will add another 44 items to the list of items described under handicrafts, as prepared by Vanaja Sarna, CBEC chairperson.
The new rates will come into force from January 25, Jaitley said. The GST Council, distressed by the lower collections under GST, also questioned the validity of the compensation scheme, which allowed business under Rs 20 lakh to be taxed flat rate of 5 per cent under self-declaration, and had seen abysmally low response.
"Out of 17 lakh dealers who had registered themselves, collection in first quarter is only Rs 307 crore. The composition scheme has not seen an enthusiatic response and there could be cases of under declaration in compensation scheme," Jaitley said, indicating that stricter monitoring will be done hence forth of the scheme applicants.
On the issue of large amount of IGST fund still lying unused, the Council agreed to provisionally divide a kitty of Rs 35,000 crore between the Centre and the States.
Speaking two weeks away from the Union budget, finance minister Jaitley said that direct tax revenue collections as of January 15, are up 8.7 per cent over last year. He said the rate of growth has been reasonably rapid in the last few quarters.
Jaitley said he is hopeful that the government's indirect tax collections are likely to go up going ahead. The next GST Council meeting is likely also to discuss the issue of inclusion of petroleum products under GST with states.
