In the 35th meeting of GST Council on Friday, the council extended the date for filing the annual returns under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime by two months to August 30.
Also, the council has decided to introduce new one-form new GST return filing system, which will be effective from January 1, 2020.
The Revenue Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey said, “One of the major changes that we’ve made is for the ease of GST registration. In the earlier system, people had to give various documents. Now we have decided to use Aadhaar. By using Aadhaar several advantages will occur to the business. The person who is applying can go online, using his Aadhaar number through OTP authentication he can register himself on the GSTN portal and get GSTN registration number.”
After the recently held general elections, the GST Council was its first meet. The council was headed by the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Further, it also approved the electronic invoicing system and e-ticketing in multiplexes.
On the other side, the GST Council also eased the registration process by businesses to register with GST-Network by allowing the use of Aadhaar.
However, there are other decisions announced in the GST Council. They are as:
- The proposal to reduce the GST rate on electric vehicles to 5% from the current 12% has been sent to fitment committee.
- The fitment committee will also come to a decision on the proposal to bring down the GST rate on the electric charger to 12% from 18% (With Agency Inputs)
- The Council has also extended the tenure of the anti-profiteering authority by two years. The anti-profiteering authority is supposed to deal with complaints by consumers against companies for not passing on GST rate cut benefits.
- It also approved for the imposition of a penalty of up to 10% on entities not passing on benefits of GST rate cuts to consumers.
