GST Council Meeting held on 14.03.2020: Live Updates

• FM N. Sitharaman in the presence of MoS Anurag Thakur is chairing the 39th GST Council meeting in New Delhi today. The Meeting is also being attended by Finance Ministers of States & UTs and Senior officers from Union Government & States.

GST Council on IT glitches

• GST Council has taken a detailed review of IT glitches; GST Council GOM chairman on IT glitches, Sushil Modi gave a detailed presentation on current IT challenges faced by taxpayers. he has high lighted that, taxpayera are still facing issues in filing GST returns
• FM Nirmala Sitharaman pulls up GSTN & Infosys on tech & compliance issues; asked GSTN & Infosys to enhance capacities to deal with high traffic. FM also tells the Revenue Department to overhaul top management at GSTN
• Nilekani, Chairman of Infosys to be present in next 3 meetings to update the council on latest problems, progress on already identified glitches and future roadmap
• He has assured that glitches to be streamlined by Jan,2021; He has also proposed overhauling of system with a specific step-wise roadmap. However his proposal is subject to getting hardware from China.

GST Council on balancing GST Rates of various commodities

• Centre has proposed GST Rate hike on various products citing it as a correction of inverted duty structure
• GST rate on textiles proposed to be revised to 12% on all garments & made-ups by Fitment Panel
• Hiking GST rate on all chemical fertilisers from 5% to 12% also proposed by Fitment Panel
• The Panel has also hightlighted that, 70% of footwear sold at 5%, but inputs range used are under 5%, 12% & 18%.
• It has been decided to increase rate on mobile phones to 18% from 12%.

GST Annual Return & GST Audit for FY 18-19

• GST Council decides to extend deadline for filing of GSTR9 & GSTR9C for FY18-19 till June 30, 2020.
• Filing to be mandatory for taxpayers over Rs5cr of annual turnover

New GST Return Mechanism

GST Council to continue with 3B till September & defer the new return system

Taxability of economic surplus of brand owners of alcohol

Council defers the proposal of GST on economic surplus of brand owners of alcohol for human consumption

Compensation to States

Chairman of GST Council has reassued that states will recieve their payment of compensation dues soon!

GST Council Meeting held on 14.03.2020 decided that Interest for delay in payment of GST to be charged on the net cash tax liability w.e.f. 01.07.2017 (Law to be amended retrospectively).

Cancellation of registrations

Where registrations have been cancelled till 14.03.2020, application for revocation of cancellation of registration can be filled up to 30.06.2020 (extension of period of application as one-time measure to facilitate those who want to conduct business).