The GST Council meeting chaired by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has extended the date for filing annual returns under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime by two months to August 30.
The 35th meeting was attended by the Finance Ministers of States/Union Territories (UTs) & Senior Officers of the Ministry of Finance & State Governments among others.
During the meeting, it was also announced that the Council has decided to introduce a new one-form new GST return filing system, which will be applicable from January 1, 2020.
This is the first meeting of the Council after the recently concluded general elections. The Finance Minister also approved an electronic invoicing system and e-ticketing in multiplexes.
The Council also made the registration process less difficult by allowing the use of Aadhaar by businesses to register with GST-Network (GSTN).
Revenue Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey said, “One of the major changes that we’ve made is for the ease of GST registration. In the earlier system, people had to give various documents. Now we have decided to use Aadhaar. By using Aadhaar several advantages will occur to the business. The person who is applying can go online, using his Aadhaar number through OTP authentication he can register himself on the GSTN portal and get GSTN registration number.”
Here are the other decisions announced by the GST Council after today’s meeting:
The tenure of the anti-profiteering authority was extended by two years. The authority deals with complaints by consumers against companies for not passing on GST rate cut benefits.
It also approved the imposition of a penalty of up to 10 percent on entities not passing on benefits of GST rate cuts to consumers.
The proposal to reduce the GST rate on electric vehicles to 5 percent from the current 12 percent has been sent to the fitment committee.
The fitment committee will also decide on the proposal to bring down the GST rate on the electric charger to 12 percent from 18 percent.
