Business

GST Council Meet Begins At SKICC; 150 Delegates, 200 Journalists In Attendance

Srinagar: Union Finance Minister, Aun Jaitely, is heading a 150-delegate meeting of Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council at SK International Convention Centre (SKICC) here on Thursday.

Tipped to be crucial before GST roll-out, the GST Council meet is 14th in a row which will finalise tax slabs on services and commodities in India.

This is the first time that such an important policy-making meet is being held in restive Jammu and Kashmir.

Around 150 dignitaries including Finance Ministers and Finance Secretaries of all the states will be attending the crucial meeting in Srinagar where the GST will be finally rolled out.

Nearly 200 journalists, both foreign and Indian, are covering the meeting which started at 10:30 am and will continue till 6:30 pm.

A technical committee of officials met yesterday in Srinagar before the start of the meeting to evolve a broad consensus on the fitment of the items in the tax slabs.

Tax slabs have been decided for about 80 per cent of items, though decision regarding contentious items like motor vehicles, beedi, coconut oil will be taken up for discussion in the Council’s meeting, an official said. Services are likely to be placed in two slabs of 12 per cent and 18 per cent, with a likely status quo for currently exempted services.

Jaitley will address a media conference on Friday about the council’s decisions.

The Jammu and Kashmir government has said it would take a final call on participation in the GST regime after bringing legislation to protect the interests of the state and bring the national GST policy in consonance with the state’s constitution.

The PDP-BJP government has decided to call special session of J&K Legislature to discuss GST implementation in state.

Jammu and Kashmir is the only state in India that has a constitution of its own which is applicable here concomitantly with the Indian constitution.

On Wednesday, J&K Minister for Finance Dr Haseeb Drabu visited SKICC here to personally take stock of the arrangements made for the meet.

Currently, there are 17 items in the negative list of services on which service tax is not levied. On top of that there are over 60 services, like religious pilgrimage, healthcare, education, skill development, journalistic activities, which are exempt from service tax.

Along with the fitment of items in the tax slabs, representatives from 31 states and union territories and Centre will converge to discuss the draft GST rules pertaining to accounts and records, advance ruling, appeals and revision, assessment and audit and e-way bill that have been already placed in public domain. Also, the Council is expected to give final approval to four sets of rules relating to input tax credit, valuation, transitional provisions and composition scheme, which were tentatively approved in the last meeting on March 31.

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