ACs, fridges, TVs in GST-cut list

The GST Council on Saturday brought down taxes on a host of consumer items, mainly white goods, making them cheaper.

It also made a massive simplification in return filing, exempting 93% or about 80 lakh dealers from filing monthly GST returns.

Airconditioners, refrigerators, certain television sets, paints, leather goods were among the 17 out of 49 goods in the highest bracket of 28% that were brought down to 18%.

“I believe today’s rate reduction will help 125 crore countrymen. GST Council must move ahead from merely concentrating on revenue collection and broaden its gauge to job creation,” Finance Minister Piyush Goyal, who chaired his first GST Council meeting, said.

Goyal said women will be the happiest to know that the Council has fully exempted sanitary napkins from all kinds of taxes.

“Now, there will be no tax on these,” Goyal said.

The composite dealers will now have to file returns once in three months but they will continue to pay GST every month. The threshold for composite dealers was also raised from Rs 1 crore to Rs 1.5 crore.

The tax rates were also simplified for those having a turnover of more than Rs 1.5 crore. The simplified GST return forms will not be more than two pages.

Goyal said the decision taken by the GST Council will be applicable from July 27. The return simplification, however, will take some time.

And as the Centre prepares to roll out its ambitious Ayushman Bharat scheme to provide a Rs 5 lakh health cover to 10 crore families, Goyal assured consumers that its premium will be exempted from GST.

The exchequer is expected to incur a revenue loss of up to Rs 15,000 crore due to the rationalisation of rates in Saturday’s meeting.

But industry welcomed the rate cut in consumer goods ahead of the festive season saying the move would generate more revenues for the government than before. The hotel industry was given tax relief too.

The council also decided to defer the reverse charge mechanism under GST till September 2019.

This was one of the lengthiest GST Council meetings with the day’s agenda spanning into 412 pages touching a wide range of subjects from taxes, cess, tariffs, appeals and approval for amendments in certain previous rules.

The meeting lasted for about eight hours in which almost all finance ministers of the states were present.

This was the first GST Council meeting which was not attended by Union Minister Arun Jaitley.

DH News Service