Nirmala Sitharaman to chair 38th GST council meeting in Delhi

The 38th Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council Meeting chaired by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, will be held in Delhi on Wednesday, December 18. A review of the tax rates and slabs under GST is to be announced in the meeting scheduled for the afternoon.

The previous GST Council meeting was held on September 20 in Goa. Important decisions were taken in the 37th meeting, including several new GST exemptions; making Aadhar card mandatory for registering taxpayers under GST; and relaxation in filing of annual returns for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) for Financial Year 2017-18 and 2018-19.

Other dignitaries who attended the meeting along with Sitharaman were Minister of State (MoS) for Finance Anurag Thakur, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant, Minister for Transport and Panchayat, Mauvin Godinho who has been nominated a member of Goa for GST Council.

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New GST returns to be introduced from April 1, 2020

The Central GST and State GST authorities have organised a nationwide GST stakeholder feedback on new GST return for getting an on-the-spot response to the new GST returns to be introduced from April 1, 2020. The focus would be on assessing the ease of compliance and uploading of these new returns so that the trade does not face any difficulty when the returns are made legally mandatory. These feedback sessions will be attended by all prominent chambers of commerce and industry and other organisations representing taxpayers and tax practitioners and compliance managers, the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

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GST revenue collection crossed Rs 1 lakh crore in November

GST revenue collection crossed the Rs 1 lakh crore mark after a gap of three months in November with the revenue growing by 6 per cent to Rs 1.03 lakh crore in the month. The GST collection was Rs 95,380 crore in October while it was Rs 97,637 crore November 2018. Of gross Rs 1,03,492 crore in November, CGST is Rs 19,592 crore, SGST is Rs 27,144 crore, IGST is Rs 49,028 crore (including Rs 20,948 crore collected on imports) and Cess is Rs 7,727 crore (including Rs 869 crore collected on imports), an official statement said.

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(With inputs from ANI)