FM Nirmala Sitharaman to chair 40th GST council meeting through video conferencing today

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will chair the 40th GST council meeting through video conferencing today. This meeting of the GST council will be the first meet after the nationwide lockdown was announced. During the meet, the council is expected to discuss the revenue shortfall and the compensation to states.

In the last meeting in March, Ms Sitharaman had said that the Centre will look into the legality of GST Council borrowing from the market to meet the compensation requirements.

The Council is likely to decide on ways to garner funds to compensate states for the revenue loss due to GST implementation. It would also discuss waiver of late fees for non-filing of GST returns for the period August 2017 to January 2020.

Faced with the dismal collection and extended deadline for filing returns, the government has refrained from releasing the monthly GST revenue collection figures for the months of April and May.

The GST law guarantees payment of any loss in revenues to the state for the first five years by the centre from the day when GST law was implemented, i.e. July 1, 2017. The shortfall is calculated assuming a 14 per cent annual growth in GST collections by states over the base year of 2015-16.

Taxes Levied Under GST Structure

The taxes have been divided into four slabs under the GST structure and they are 5 per cent, 12 per cent, 18 per cent and 28 per cent slabs.