23rd GST Council

The GST Council in its 23rd Meeting decided to reduce tax rate on a wide range of daily use items. The meeting was held in Guwahati and was chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

The major highlights of the meeting are as under:

GST on 178 items has been reduced to 18% from 28%. Only 50 demerit & luxury items now in 28% slab.

All restaurants will be levied GST at 5%, without input tax credit (ITC) benefits. 

Five-star restaurants within starred-hotels with room rent above Rs. 7,500 will attract 18% GST and can avail ITC benefits.

The council decided the tax rate for traders & manufacturing under composition will be 1%. No inter-state taxes & input tax credit for composition dealers will be levied.

Filing of form GSTR-3B has been extended till March 2018. Simplified GSTR-3B to be inytoduced with indicative filing facility for those businesses which have nil tax liability or have no transactions to file in invoice.

Late Fees for the months of July, August and September, 2017 for GSTR-3B has been waived off. 

From October 2017 onwards, the amount of late fee payable by a taxpayer whose tax liability for that month was ‘NIL’ will be Rs. 20/- per day instead of Rs. 200/-. For other tax filers, the late fee will Rs 50 per day.

The GST Council also decided that taxpayers with annual aggregate turnover up to Rs. 1.5 crore need to file GSTR-1 on quarterly basis

Taxpayers with a turnover of above Rs. 1.5 crore need to file GSTR-1 on monthly basis.

Till March 2018, businesses with turnover of over Rs 1.5 crore will have to file only GSTR-1 or sales returns by 40th day of the end of the month. This will be in addition to initial GSTR-3B returns.

GST on 13 items have been reduced to 12% from 18%

GST on 2 items have been brought into 12% from 28%.

6 items have been brought into 5% from 18% slab.

GST on 8 items has been cut to 5% from 12%.

Tax rate on 6 items has been lowered to zero from 5%.

Source: GST India Expert.