GST council: Taxpayers get major relief; here’s how

The 28th meeting of the GST Council was held today in New Delhi, under which once again the 21-member committee has brought in revision to a list of items under Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. The meeting was chaired by Union Minister of Railways, Coal, Finance and Corporate Affairs Piyush Goyal. While a list of items were getting relief from higher tax slab from GST rate of 28%, Goyal also brought in good news for taxpayers. It may be recalled that in the 27th meeting held on 4th of May, 2018 the Council had approved the basic principles of GST return design and directed the law committee to finalize the return formats and changes in law.

The council said, “The formats and business process approved today were in line with the basic principles with one major change i.e the option of filing quarterly return with monthly payment of tax in a simplified return format by the small taxpayers.”

Here’s how GST Council gave relief to taxpayers.

All taxpayers excluding small taxpayers and a few exceptions like ISD etc. shall file one monthly return. The return is simple with two main tables. One for reporting outward supplies and one for availing input tax credit based on invoices uploaded by the supplier. Invoices can be uploaded continuously by the seller and can be continuously viewed and locked by the buyer for availing input tax credit.

This process would ensure that very large part of the return is automatically filled based on the invoices uploaded by the buyer and the seller. Simply put, the process would be “UPLOAD – LOCK – PAY” for most taxpayers.

Further, taxpayers would have facility to create his profile based on nature of supplies made and received. The fields of information which a taxpayer would be shown and would be required to fill in the return would depend on his profile.

NIL return filers (no purchase and no sale) shall be given facility to file return by sending SMS.  

Moreover, the council also approved quarterly filing of return for the small taxpayers having turnover below Rs. 5 Cr as an optional facility. Quarterly return shall be similar to main return with monthly payment facility but for two kinds of registered persons – small traders making only B2C supply or making B2B + B2C supply.

For such taxpayers, simplified returns have been designed called  Sahaj and Sugam. In these returns details of information required to be filled is lesser than that in the regular return.

It needs to be noted that, 93% of the taxpayers have a turnover of less than Rs 5 Cr and these taxpayers would benefit substantially from the simplification measures proposed improving their ease of doing business, as per the council. It explained that even the large taxpayers would find the design of new return quite user friendly.

Not only this, the council also has approved the proposal to open the migration window for taxpayers, who received provisional IDs but could not complete the migration process.

The taxpayers who filed Part A of FORM GST REG-26, but not Part B of the Tsaid FORM are requested to approach the jurisdictional Central Tax/State Tax nodal officers with the necessary details on or before 31st August, 2018.

Taxpayers who intend to complete the migration process are requested to approach their jurisdictional Central Tax/State Tax nodal officers in this regard.