New GST rules changes :Three months after the rollout of the indirect tax regime, the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, following a meeting on Friday, announced relief to small and medium businesses on filing and payment of taxes, and also eased rules for exporters and cut tax rates on 27 common use items.
After the meeting, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, “GST Council has considered the implementation experience of the last three months and gave relief to small traders… Compliance burden of medium and small taxpayers in GST has been reduced.”
The relief granted to small and medium enterprises comes after complaints of tedious compliance burden under the GST that was intended to be a simple indirect tax regime which replaced over a dozen Central and state taxes.
The decision to reduce the compliance burden of small companies and traders, came two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi address regarding concerns over implementation of GST where he said that he had asked the Council to identify bottlenecks faced by small and medium enterprises.
Here’s the full list of New GST rules made by the Finance Minister during the meeting:
Composition Scheme
1. The composition scheme will be made available to taxpayers having annual aggregate turnover of up to Rs. 1 crore as against the previous turnover threshold of Rs 75 lakhs. This threshold of turnover for special category States will be increased to Rs 75 lakhs from Rs 50 lakhs, while the turnover threshold for Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand will be Rs 1 crore.
2. It has been decided that such People who are otherwise eligible for availing the composition scheme and are providing any exempt service(such as extending deposits to banks for which interest is being received), will be eligible for the composition scheme.
3. To make the composition scheme more attractive, a Group of Ministers (GoM) will be constituted to examine measures.
4. It has now been decided to exempt those service providers whose annual aggregate turnover is less than Rs 20 lakhs (Rs. 10 lakhs in special category states except for J & K) from obtaining registration even if they are making inter-State taxable supplies of services. This measure is expected to significantly reduce the compliance cost of small service providers.
5. To facilitate the ease of payment and return filing for small and medium businesses with annual aggregate turnover up to Rs 1.5 crores, a recommendation has been made that such taxpayers will be required to file quarterly returns in FORM GSTR-1,2 & 3 and pay taxes only on a quarterly basis, starting from the Third Quarter of this Financial Year i.e. October-December, 2017.
6. To benefit small businesses and substantially reduce compliance costs, the reverse charge mechanism under sub-section (4) of section 9 of the CGST Act, 2017 and under sub-section (4) of section 5 of the IGST Act, 2017 will be suspended till March 31, 2018 and will be reviewed by a committee of experts.
7. In order to mitigate inconvenience faced by small dealers and manufacturers, it has been decided that taxpayers having annual aggregate turnover up to Rs 1.5 crores shall not be required to pay GST at the time of receipt of advances on account of supply of goods. The GST on such supplies will be payable only when the supply of goods is made.
8. In order to remove the hardship being faced by small unregistered businesses, the services provided by a Goods Transport Agencies (GTA) to an unregistered person will be exempted from GST.
Must Read : GST Council reduced tax rates on 27 goods. Full list of what got cheaper
Other Facilitation Measures
9. After assessing the readiness of the trade, industry and Government departments, it has been decided that registration and operationalisation of TDS/TCS provisions will be postponed till March 31, 2018.
10. In order to give trade and industry more time to accustom itself with the GST regime, the e-way bill system will be introduced in a staggered manner with effect from January 01, 2018 and then will be rolled out nationwide with effect from April 01, 2018.
11. The last date for filing the return in FORM GSTR-4 by a taxpayer under composition scheme for the quarter July-September, 2017 will be extended to November 15, 2017. Also, the last date for filing the return in FORM GSTR-6 by an input service distributor for the months of July, August and September, 2017 will be extended to November 15, 2017.
12. Invoice Rules are being modified to provide relief to certain classes of registered persons.
