The 25^th Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council meeting, held under the chairmanship of finance minister Arun Jaitley, has recommended reduction of GST rate on velvet fabric (code 5801 37 20) from 12 per cent to 5 per cent with no refund of unutilised input tax credit. The recommendation of the Council will be effective from 00 hours on January 25, 2018.

The Council, at its meeting in New Delhi, also decided that the late fee payable by any registered person for failure to furnish form GSTR-1 (supply details), form GSTR-5 (non-resident taxable person) or form GSTR-5A (OIDAR) will be reduced to fifty rupees per day and shall be twenty rupees per day for ‘nil’ filers. The late fee payable for failure to furnish form GSTR-6 (Input Service Distributor) shall be fifty rupees per day.

Taxable persons who have obtained voluntary registration will now be permitted to apply for cancellation of registration even before the expiry of one year from the effective date of registration.

For migrated taxpayers, the last date for filing form GST REG-29 for cancellation of registration has been extended by further three months till March 31, 2018.

On e-way bills, the GST Council said that the facility for generation, modification and cancellation of e-way bills is being provided on trial basis on the portal ewaybill.nic.in. Once fully operational, the e-way bill system will start functioning on the portal ewaybillgst.gov.in.

In addition, certain modifications are being made to the e-way bill rules which will be notified nationwide for inter-state movement with effect from February 1, 2018 and for intra-state movement with effect from a date to be announced separately by each state but not later than June 1, 2018.

The Council also accepted the report and recommendations submitted by the Committee on Handicrafts. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India

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