New Delhi: The GST (Goods and Services Tax) Council meeting at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi chaired by Finance Minister Piyush Goyal will mainly focus on the specific agenda of easing the challenges for MSME sector. The council looked towards the taxation-related issues faced by the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
The MSME sector has been facing certain challenges and not been able to come to the terms with the new GST regime.
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Important Issues to be discussed in the 29th GST Council meeting:
It is expected that the meetings will be on the line of easing out the policy, reforming the compliance and hence reducing the burden and technology-related issues which are affecting the MSME sector of the country.
There has been a demand from the industry to incentivize the refunds for the GST paid through cash, by all entities having turnover up to Rs 2.5 crore. The motive of the demand is to bring the level up incentives which were in the pre-GST regime for small-scale industries and also exemption from excise duty was given to the entities which had turnover up to Rs 1.5 crore.
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Other points to be discussed in the meeting:
The aim of introducing GST was to bring the country into a single tax system as it was said One Nation, One Tax. The MSME sector is also urging to introduce a one-time settlement scheme for assessment and arrears so as to settle the legacy disputes from the earlier tax regime. With this scheme, the sector believes that the litigations would ease out and the energy and resources in business operations would also channelize.
The demand of slashing down the rate on items like tractors and its spare parts, egg trays, movie tickets, utensils, instant convenience food, breakfast cereals etc. is popping up from the state like Andhra Pradesh.
There is also a demand to bring the option to revise the return so as to ease the compliance burden.
The industries are also urging to increase the limit of the e-way bill to Rs 100,000 as this will again reduce the compliance burden and will match the government’s motive of ease of doing business in India. Currently, the limit of the e-way bill is Rs 50,000.
Since GST is PAN based, only one registration is allowed under a PAN. Hence, it becomes difficult for the small traders who have registered multiple firms on one name only. They are hoping that registration of multiple trade names should be allowed under one PAN.
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Today’s meeting comes after tax officers in states and union territories reached out to trade and industry bodies and small businesses across the country to understand their issues and grievances relating to GST.
In the earlier Council meeting, relief for small taxpayers and MSMEs came in the form of increase in threshold amount of turnover that qualified for quarterly filing. Companies with turnover of up to Rs 5 crore can now file GST returns quarterly. This was hiked from Rs 1.5 crore.
Goyal had after the last GST council meeting said the next meeting would focus on simplification, rationalisation and relief to small taxpayers.
