42nd GST Council Meeting recommends eight major changes - (05 Oct 2020)

Goods and Services Tax

The 42nd GST Council met on 5th October, 2020 under the Chairmanship of Union Finance & Corporate Affairs Minister. The meeting was also attended by Union Minister of State for Finance & Corporate Affairs besides Finance Ministers of States & UTs and senior officers of the Ministry of Finance& States/ UTs. The GST Council has made various recommendations. As per the reports, levy of Compensation Cess is to be extended beyond the transition period of five years i.e. beyond June, 2022, for such period as may be required to meet the revenue gap. Further, various amendments in the CGST Rules and FORMS have been recommended which includes provision for furnishing of Nil FORM CMP-08 through SMS. Centre is releasing compensation of Rs. 20,000 crore to States towards loss of revenue during 2020-21.

With a view to further enhance Ease of Doing Business and improve the compliance experience, the Council has approved the future roadmap for return filing under GST. The approved framework aims to simplify return filing and further reduce the taxpayer’s compliance burden. The timely filing of GSTR-1 statement alone would be sufficient as the return in FORM GSTR-3B would get auto prepared on the common portal. As a further step towards reducing the compliance burden, particularly, on the small taxpayers having aggregate annual turnover of less than Rs. 5 crore, the Council’s earlier recommendation of allowing filing of returns on a quarterly basis with monthly payments by such taxpayers is to be implemented w.e.f. 1st January, 2021. Such quarterly taxpayers would, for the first two months of the quarter, have an option to pay 35% of the net cash tax liability of the last quarter using an auto generated challan.

Council has revised requirement of declaring Harmonised System Nomenclature (HSN) for goods and Servicing Accounting Code (SAC) for services in invoices and in FORM GSTR-1w.e.f. 1st April, 2021. Refund is to be paid/disbursed in a validated bank account linked with the PAN and Aadhaar of the registrant w.e.f. 1st January, 2021. Further, to encourage domestic launching of satellites particularly by young start-ups, the satellite launch services supplied by ISRO, Antrix Corporation Ltd. and NSIL would be exempted.

Tags : GST COUNCIL MEETING RECOMMENDATIONS