GST Council To Meet In Hyderabad On Saturday

The 21st meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, composed of finance ministers of various states and headed by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, is slated to be held in Hyderabad on Saturday.

Following the council's previous meeting here last month, Jaitley had appealed to the Indian industry to pass on to customers the benefits of the novel input credit system introduced in the new pan-India indirect tax regime that is available to suppliers of goods and services in the country. Under the GST, goods and services providers will get the benefit of input tax credit for the goods used, effectively making the real incidence of taxation lower than the headline taxation rate. The council also announced that anti-profiteering screening committees would be set up to give effect to the National Anti-Profiteering Authority, set up under the GST law. Among other decisions, the council also decided to implement the GST provision on e-way bills requiring goods more than Rs 50,000 in value to be pre-registered online before they could be moved. Previous Minister of State for Finance Arjun Ram Meghwal had said last month that the number of tax slabs in the GST regime would be reduced with improvement in revenue. With the exempted category, the existing tax slabs are of 5, 12, 18 and 28 per cent.