GST Council Clears Compensation Bill, to Next Meet on 4-5 March

GST council gave final clearance to the GST compensation bill at the meeting on Saturday.

A decision on which rate slabs would apply to which goods and services will be taken after the next meeting of the GST council to be held on 4-5 March, said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley after a council meet in Udaipur on Saturday.

The meeting was intended to give the final go-ahead to supporting legislation needed for the implementation of the of the Goods and Services Tax (GST). While one such legislation was cleared, another three will be taken up at the next meeting of the council.

The GST compensation law has been passed formally by the council and it is now ready to go to Parliament, said Jaitley at a press briefing. In the case of the Central GST Bill, the State GST Bill and the Integrated GST Bill, the council discussed some issues that had come up during the legal vetting process and gave its views, said Jaitley.

These views will now be incorporated and the council will likely approve these changes at the 4-5 March meeting, he added.

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The key issue that remains to be worked on is a decision on which goods and services get taxed at what rate.

“After 4-5 March, officers will start fitting items into slabs. One major meeting after 4-5 March is needed to approve these slabs,” said Jaitley.

The Council has finalised a four-rate structure under which goods and services will be taxed. The rates have been set at 5, 12, 18 and 28 percent, with an additional cess over and above the highest tax rate for demerit goods.

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The government is hoping to introduce the Model GST Law in Parliament in the second half of the Budget Session beginning from March 9.

At its last meeting, the GST Council had cleared the contentious issue of administration of tax assessees. It was decided that assessees with an annual turnover below Rs 1.5 crore will be divided between the states and centre in the ratio of 90:10. Those with an annual turnover above Rs 1.5 crore will be divided equally between the states and the centre.

(Read the full story on the BloombergQuint.)