Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman chaired Goods and Services council meeting on Saturday in New Delhi. The GST council proposed to raise the Goods and Services tax on mobile phones from 12 percent to 18 percent. FM said that “the council has decided to hike the GST on Mobile phones to 18 percent from the current 12 percent. There will be one rationalized rate of GST which is 12 percent for both hands made and machine made matchsticks. The machine-made matchsticks were taxed 18 percent while the hand-made were at 5 percent.”
According to the council, the decision is taken to raise the GST on mobile phones is taken to correct the inverted duty-structure, where the inputs are taxed at higher rates and the final products taxed at lower rates. Now both components and assembled mobile phones will attract the same GST.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman: It was decided to reduce the GST rate on Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) services in respect of aircraft from 18% to 5% with full ITC and to change the place of supply for B2B MRO services to the location of the recipient. pic.twitter.com/KU2uCm50PM
— ANI (@ANI) March 14, 2020
The finance minister added, “It was decided to reduce the GST rate on Maintainance, repair, and overhaul(MRO) services in respect of aircraft from 18 percent to 5 percent with the full input tax credit(ITC). Relaxation to MSMEs from the furnishing of reconciliation statement for the financial year 2018-19 for all taxpayers having an aggregated turnover below 5 crores.”
The following decisions taken will be applicable from April 1.
The Finance Ministry has issued a statement on the gross GST collection in the month of February this year is pegged at Rupees 1,05,366 crore with a growth of 12 percent from the domestic transaction in comparison to the February last year.
GST collected from the import of goods, the total revenue during February 2020 has increased by 8 percent compared to the revenue of February 2019.
FM said, “the council has decided to give tax relief to the taxpayers by amending a law. The interest payable for delay in payment of GST will be charged on net tax liability and not the gross tax liability with effect from 1 July 2017. The law will be amended with retrospective effect.”
FM Sitharaman said, “Due date for filing the annual return and the reconciliation statement for the financial year 2018-19 to be extended till 30th June 2020.
She announced that late fee will not be levied for the late filing of annual returns for the reconciliation statement 2017-18 and 2018-19 for taxpayers with aggregate turn over less than 2 crores.
