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GST rates on 29 goods, 53 services cut
Context
The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council has reduced the rates on 29 goods and 53 categories of services, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said following the Council’s meeting on Thursday.
GST Council also mulls approaches to ease the burden of filing returns in order to boost compliance
Against the backdrop of declining GST collections and waning compliance, the Council also discussed in detail various approaches to ease the return filing compliance burden, and the need for the implementation of anti-evasion measures.
Services
Some of the services for which the rates have been cut include:
- Tailoring (18% to 5%)
- Admission to theme parks (28% to 18%)
- And petroleum and natural gas mining and exploration (18% to 12%)
Goods
The goods on which the rates have been reduced include:
- Biodiesel buses used for public transport (28% to 18%)
- Sugar boiled confectionery
- Biodiesel
- Drinking water packed in 20 litre containers (all from 18% to 12%)
- And LPG supplied to domestic consumers by private distributors (18% to 5%)
In effect
The new rates would come into effect on January 25.
More cuts to come
“One would expect that over the next few months, this process would continue, particularly with respect to 28% category, which should only be for select luxury and demerit products
Anti-evasion measures
There is a need to build in anti-evasion measures
- The e-waybill system [to be rolled out on February 1] will be one of these.
As these anti-evasion measures are implemented, the revenues should start picking up again.
