Key Elements of 27th GST Council Meeting held on 4th May, 2018

GST Council in its 27th meeting approved principles for filing of new return design based on the recommendations of the Group of Ministers on IT simplification. The key elements of the new return design are as follows.

1. Composition dealers and dealers having nil transaction shall have facility to file quarterly return.

2. There shall be unidirectional flow of invoices uploaded by the seller on anytime basis during the month which would be the valid document to avail input tax credit by the buyer.

3. The B2B dealers will have to fill invoice-wise details of the outward supply made by them, based on which the system will automatically calculate his tax liability.

4. The input tax credit will be calculated automatically by the system based on invoices uploaded by his sellers.

5. Taxpayer shall be also given user friendly IT interface and offline IT tool to upload the invoices.

6. There shall not be any automatic reversal of input tax credit from buyer on non-payment of tax by the seller.

7. Recovery of tax or reversal of input tax credit shall be through a due process of issuing notice and order. The process would be online and automated to reduce the human interface.

8. Unloading of invoices by the seller to pass input tax credit who has defaulted in payment of tax above a threshold amount shall be blocked to control misuse of input tax credit facility.

9. There will be a three stage transition to the new system.

10. Government is keen to introduce the simplified return design at the earliest to reduce the compliance burden on the trade in keeping with the philosophy of ease of doing business.

11. GSTN be converted into be a fully owned government Company.

12 The council has recommended for setting up of a Group of Ministers from State Governments to look into matter of Incentive to promote Digital Transactions and Imposition of Sugar Cess over and above 5% GST and reduction in GST rate on ethanol.