The GST Council meeting in New Delhi on Thursday reduced tax rate of 29 items and 54 categories of services.
Addressing the press conference, Union Finance Minister said that next meeting of GST Council will approve simpler process for filing of returns. Jaitley said, " Discussed the simplification of return filing process in the meeting, Nandan Nilekani gave a detailed presentation on simplifying return filing process". However Congress' demand of considering involving petroleum products under GST ambit wasn't taken up in the meeting. However Jaitley said that in the next meeting the issue may be considered. The reduced rate for goods will be applicable from January 25. The meeting comes just couple of weeks before Union Budget and was supposed to take up the issue of problems users are facing regarding filing of taxes.
In a bid to ease compliance burden, the Council veered around to the idea of registered entities continuing to file the return in GSTR 3B Form while moving to a system where supplier invoice captures details of the transaction.
The new process would be finalised in the next meeting of the GST Council after a written formulation is circulated to the states, Arun Jaitley said. The date of the next meeting of the Council has not yet been decided, he said.
Jaitley said the GST provision requiring transporters to carry an electronic waybill or e-way bill, when moving goods of over Rs 50,000 in value between states, will be implemented from February 1 to check rampant tax evasion. As many as 15 states have decided to implement the provision for intra-state movements as well, he said. After implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from July 1, the requirement of carrying e-way bill was postponed pending IT network readiness. Once the e-way bill system is implemented, tax avoidance will become extremely difficult as the government will have details of all goods above the value of Rs 50,000 moved and can spot the mismatch if either the supplier or the purchaser does not file tax returns.
With PTI inputs
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