Union Finance Minister Mr.Arun Jaitley declared in his recent press meets that the Federal Indirect Tax body Goods and Service Tax (GST) council is all set to redecorate return filing process and the main agenda behind the council is to liberalize the GST rules in order to reduce the complains burden of tax payers and to boost Government revenue.
The Central and State Government officials will meet on 27 February in order to give a final shape to the proposal before the council takes it up on 1st March for approval.
While addressing the media, the Finance Minister said that the idea of simplifying the GST returns culminated in a particular direction but the council felt that there was a need for more discussion and further formalisation. Giving a glimpse into what can be done, Arun Jaitley said that the council decide to continue only with GSTR-3B. subsuming GSTR-1, 2 and 3, while adding filing of supplier invoices. However, other options may also be under consideration.
Goods and Services Tax (GST) is an indirect tax which was introduced in India on 1 July 2017 and was applicable throughout India which replaced multiple cascading taxes levied by the central and state governments. GST made a lot of confusions to the tax payers and businesses from the beginning. Even now also, the tax payers are puzzled because of certain ambiguities and technical glitches.
In its next meeting, the council will seriously consider the issues regarding the tax liabilities of small businesses, manufactures and restaurants and try their maximum to avoid the compliance burden.
The main aim of the council is to remove the chaos regarding the new tax regime and modify the existing rules more user friendly and make the taxpayers more aware about their tax liability.
The council will be discussing about the uniform date announcement for the E-way bill which is presently on hold. The Government, with a lot of expectations, had launched the E-Way Bill mechanism on 1st February. However, the same was withdrawn due to the technical glitches in the GST portal.
