The GST Council on Friday decided to roll out in six months a new, simpler process of filing monthly returns, as it deferred a decision on imposing a sugar cess and allowing an incentive for digital payments. In its 27th meeting, the GST Council also decided to take complete ownership of the goods and services tax network (GSTN) by acquiring the equity share held by non-government institutions.

However, deferring the decision on the imposition of a cess on sugar as well as a two per cent incentive for making payments digitally, the panel decided to set up two separate groups of five finance ministers of states to give recommendations on both issues.

After the meeting, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the new simplified return filing process approved by the GST Council will require all taxpayers, barring composition dealers and those with "nil transaction", to file only one GST return every month.

For composition dealers and dealers having "nil transaction", only one return will have to be filed every quarter.

The new system would be put in place within the next six months and another six months would be given to the taxpayers to make the complete transition, Jaitley said.

The facility of provisional input tax credit will be withdrawn only after the new system is completely implemented, which is expected to take around one year. After it comes fully into force, the input credit will be auto-generated for the buyers based on invoices uploaded by the sellers.

The GST Council also discussed the proposal to impose a cess on sugar over and above the five per cent GST considering the sugarcane farmers were in distress with the cost of producing sugar being significantly higher than its market price.

Arun Jaitley said the GST Council had decided to set up a group of five ministers within two days to make a recommendation on ways to meet such contingencies where the cost of a commodity is higher than its selling price.

The committee will submit its report within two weeks keeping in view the urgency of the matter, Jaitley said.

GSTN is handling large-scale invoice level data of millions of business entities, including data relating to exports and imports. #casansaar (Source - PTI, Business Standard)