JAMMU, OCTOBER 5:- Advisor to Lieutenant Governor, K.K Sharma today attended 42nd Meeting of GST Council through Video conferencing.
The meeting held under the Chairmanship of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was attended by Finance Ministers of different states.
The Advisor while representing the UT of Jammu and Kashmir put forth views regarding different agenda points discussed during the course of meeting.
He also extended support to the option proposed by the Union Government for meeting compensation requirements of the states.
Financial Commissioner Finance Arun Mehta, Commissioner Sales Tax PK bhat and other senior officers also attended.
Further, it is reported that even with consensus eluding a decision on the new formula to pay GST compensation to states, the 42nd meeting of the GST Council on Monday decided to extend the period of compensation cess beyond the five year transition period slated till June 2022 to meet the revenue gap.
Originally, the cess was to be levied till June 2022 to compensate the states for the revenue gap that emerged from the transition to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime in 2017. The extension would mean that cess would be collected for few more years to pay compensation dues of states arising between April 2020 and June 2022.
The decision, though beneficial for the states, comes as a setback for businesses which will have to pay the cess to compensate the states.
Among other major decisions, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the Centre will release compensation of Rs 20,000 crore (the amount collected from cess so far this fiscal) to states towards loss of revenue during 2020-21 by Monday night and an amount of about Rs 25,000 crore towards IGST of 2017-18 by next week.
As a further step towards reducing the compliance burden, particularly on the small taxpayers having aggregate annual turnover of Rs 5 crore, the Council’s earlier recommendation of allowing filing of returns on a quarterly basis with monthly payments by such taxpayers will be implemented with effect from January 1, 2021.