The Centre on Wednesday notified the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council’s latest decisions, giving effect to the revised tax rates on goods from November 15. The government said all product prices must reflect the change.
“A consumer shall be charged the revised reduced rates of 18% on these items with effect from the 15th November, 2017. On 178 items the GST rate has been brought down from 28% to 18%,” the government said in a release. “Accordingly, there would be a corresponding reduction in price/MRP on these goods. Consumers may take note of these reductions while making purchases.”
At its meeting last week, the GST Council had pared the number of items in the highest tax slab of 28% to 50. It had also cut the rate on restaurants — except for those in hotels having a room tariff of ₹7,500 or more — to 5% and removed their eligibility to claim input tax credits.
Deadline extensions
The Council also allowed companies having an annual turnover of less than ₹1.5 crore to file their July-September GSTR-1 forms by December 31, the October-December GSTR-1 forms by February 15, 2018, and the January-March GSTR-1 forms by April 30, 2018. Similarly, firms clocking ₹1.5 crore or more a year can now file their forms for July to October by December 31. Thereafter, they would have to file monthly returns, but with a delay of 40 days from the end of taxable period. That is, the returns for November would have to be filed by January 10, those for December by February 10, and so on.
“Virtually all the notifications that were required based on the decisions taken in the last meeting have been issued,” said M.S. Mani, senior director, Indirect Tax, at Deloitte India. “There is no real change in them versus the decisions announced at the end of the meeting.”
The latest notifications come “as a huge sigh of relief for businesses both in terms of compliance as well as working capital loss,” Abhishek Jain, Tax Partner, EY India, said in a statement. “In furtherance to the Government’s earlier move of exempting businesses with up to ₹1.5 crore from paying GST on receipt of advances for future supply of goods, similar exemption has also been extended to all except those who have opted for composition scheme.”
Tax consultants said that there were still issues that needed to be addressed. “There are several sectors that have been untouched till now,” Mr. Mani said. “For example, the car leasing companies are one of the largest employment intensive sectors in the country. Every car needs a driver, every four cars needs a technician, and every 10 cars needs a cleaner. The majority of corporates go for car leasing. These leasing firms have to pay tax at 28% without input tax credit. This is just one example.”
