look news india
An important meeting of the Group of Ministers is going to be held in Goa on 25 September to rationalize the GST rate. The meeting will discuss the new tax slabs and changes in rates. According to the information, a six-member group led by Bihar Deputy CM Samrat Chaudhary held a meeting on 22 August to discuss the GST rate. After which the status report was submitted to the GST Council on 9 September.
In its August meeting, GoMA tasked a fitment committee of tax officials from the Centre and other states to analyse the impact of changes in tax rates on certain items and collect more data. The recently introduced GST has four tiers with five rates of 12, 18 and 28 per cent.
Plan to meet 12 and 18 percent GST
Under GST, essential goods are either exempted or placed in lower tax slabs, while luxury and non-essential goods have higher rate slabs. Luxury and non-essential goods are subject to a cess above the highest slab of 28 per cent. There is talk of amalgamating the 12 and 18 per cent tax slabs of GST. But no proposal has come yet. The average GST rate has come down from 15.3 per cent to around 12 per cent. It has come to light that there is a need to start a discussion on GST. States like West Bengal and Karnataka are currently not in favour of changes in the GST slabs.
There is no need to change the GST slab
After the meeting of the Group of Ministers in August, the Finance Minister of West Bengal had said, “I have said that there should be no change in the GST slabs.” The Finance Minister of Karnataka also asked to analyse it in the Group of Ministers meeting. Is it necessary to tamper with the GST system, which has now become quite stable. He further said, what will you get by ruining it? We said that this will be discussed in the next GST meeting. The six-member group of ministers includes UP Finance Minister Suresh Kumar Khanna, Rajasthan Health Minister Gajendra Singh and Kerala Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal is also included.