More articles by

Soumik Dey
Soumik Dey

TAX REFORM

Return filers under GST to get more time

PTI6_18_2017_000042B Finance Minister Arun Jaitley with MoS Santosh Gangwar, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia and Puducherry Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy at the 17th GST Council meeting at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi | PTI

July 1 launch date of new indirect tax not to be deferred

The GST Council on Sunday decided to give more time to tax assessors to comply with the return filing norms under the unified tax regime and allowed some other relaxations also.

“There is a need felt to allow time to assessors in July and August for filing their returns,” said Arun Jaitley, Union finance minister and Chairman of the GST Council, after Sunday's meeting.

The decision will allow traders to submit their GST returns at a 15 days delay in July and 20 days in August. Return filing is likely to be regular from September onwards.

“Our system will be opened for detailed invoice wise return filing from July 15 onwards. Time for return filing for July and August will be given till September 5,” said Jaitley.

The Council decided to defer the implementation of e-way bills by at least three months. The electronically trackable e-way bills are crucial to check tax evasion and pilferage of goods on transit over long distances.

It was decided in the meeting that the states who already have their e-way bill system in place will continue with that. The states who do not have one yet will wait for the Centre to finalise the format and digitise the system for monitoring it. 

“We will finalise the draft by July and then we will need another two months to provide the e-way bill trackers and ready the IT system. So, you can say e-way bill issue will be completely resolved in three months time,” said Hasmukh Adhia, revenue secretary, ministry of finance.

Maharashtra Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar said since his state does not have the e-way bill system yet, traders were facing issues. “So, we decided to defer it’s implementation,” he said.

According to some finance ministry officials who attended Sunday's meeting, the e-way bill system as devised by government had not taken into account or studied transporters in detail.

Apparently, the Union finance ministry feels that this is the problem which prevents many states from effecting the e-way bills.

The GST Council on Sunday also upheld to have an anti-profiteering clause for the next two years.

This clause will seek to penalise those businesses who accrue a benefit of lower tax liability under the new regime, but fails to pass on the benefits to its consumers. 

High value items like cars and property would come under this clause. Any evasion will be investigated by authorities and penalties will be equivalent or more of the profit made.

“This anti-profiteering clause will cease to exist after two years, as there will be no need of it after that,” said Adhia.

Fixing rate slabs on lottery tickets became a contentious issue at Sunday's meeting. The issue of lowering GST rates on lottery was raised by Kerala which earns a substantial portion of state revenue from state-run lotteries.

“I must say that the Council had very generously accepted our demand and provided relief for all state run lottery schemes,” said Thomas Isaac, Kerala finance minister.

Lottery has been differentiated between state run lottery and those run by private operators on behalf of many states. The GST council agreed to apply two different rate categories of 12 and 28 per cent respectively.

After the meeting, Jaitley said that the July 1 launch date for GST would not be deferred.

“We are speaking with Tamil Nadu tomorrow (Monday). The two other states, West Bengal and Jammu and Kashmir, will be doing it by notifying state ordinances,” said a smiling Jaitley, indicating that the government has overcome all political hurdles for implementing the GST.

This browser settings will not support to add bookmarks programmatically. Please press Ctrl+D or change settings to bookmark this page.
Topics : #GST

Related Reading