{"id":34157,"date":"2024-12-23T18:52:24","date_gmt":"2024-12-23T13:22:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/?p=34157"},"modified":"2024-12-23T18:52:26","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T13:22:26","slug":"55th-gst-council-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/current-affairs\/23-12-2024\/55th-gst-council-meeting","title":{"rendered":"The 55th GST Council Meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Syllabus: GS3\/Taxation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Context<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The <strong>55th GST Council<\/strong> met under the Chairpersonship of the Union Minister for Finance &amp; Corporate Affairs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Key Highlights<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>It postponed a decision on<strong> reducing taxes on health and life insurance.<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Premiums on Health Insurance: <\/strong>Premiums paid by individuals, other than senior citizens, for health insurance with coverage of up to Rs 5 lakh is proposed to be exempted from GST.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>However, 18% GST will continue on premiums paid for policies with health insurance cover of over Rs 5 lakh.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Fully exempt GST <\/strong>on gene therapy.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Taxes on Food Delivery Platforms:<\/strong> Cutting taxes on food delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato, to 5% (without input tax credit), from the current 18%.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The compensation cess regime<\/strong> comes to an end in March 2026, and the GST Council has set up a panel of ministers, under the Union Minister of State, to decide the future course of the cess.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Goods and Services Tax<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The GST was introduced in <strong>2017 <\/strong>by the <strong>101st Constitutional Amendment Act, <\/strong>2016 as a comprehensive indirect tax for the entire country.\u00a0<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It is a destination based tax on <strong>consumption of goods and services.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It is levied at <strong>all stages <\/strong>right from manufacture up to final consumption.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Only value addition <\/strong>will be taxed and the burden of tax is to be borne by the final consumer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It accrues to the State or the Union Territory where the consumption takes place. It is of 3 types:\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Central GST (CGST)<\/strong>: Levied by the Center.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>State\/Union Territory GST (SGST\/UTGST)<\/strong>: Levied by States or UTs.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Integrated GST (IGST):<\/strong> Tax levied and collected by the Center on all inter-state supplies of goods and\/or services.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The Center settles accounts with the States\/UTs by transferring the SGST\/UTGST portion of IGST to the destination state where goods\/services were consumed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Four slabs for taxes for both goods and services<\/strong>: Currently, GST is a four-tier tax structure with slabs at 5, 12, 18 and 28%.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Luxury and demerit goods are taxed at the highest bracket of 28%, while packed food and essential items are at the lowest 5% slab.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>A cess<\/strong> is levied on the highest tax slab of 28% on luxury, sin and demerit goods.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The collection from the cess goes to a separate corpus called Compensation fund. It is used to make up for revenue loss suffered by the state due to GST rollout.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>GST Council<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The GST Council is a constitutional body <strong>under Article 279A.<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Composition:<\/strong> It is a federal body comprising the Union Finance Minister as its Chairman and Finance Ministers of all States as members<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Decision Making:<\/strong> It makes decisions by a <strong>simple majority<\/strong>, requiring at least <strong>three-fourths<\/strong> of the weighted votes of the members present.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The central government&#8217;s votes account for one-third of the total, while all state governments combined hold two-thirds of the voting power.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Objective:<\/strong> The Council operates as a joint forum between the Centre and States, addressing disputes and facilitating uniformity.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Major Functions of the GST Council:\u00a0<\/strong>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The Council determines which products and services fall under the GST and which do not.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>It frames laws and standard procedures that guide the administration of GST.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Council acts as a dispute resolution mechanism between the Centre and States or among states.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Council drafts special provisions for certain states, particularly for the Northeast and hilly regions.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>T<\/strong>he Council supervises the GST framework and ensures it undergoes periodic reforms to align with current economic realities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/business\/gst-council-meet-lower-taxes-on-insurance-policies-atf-inclusion\/article69012045.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>TH<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 55th GST Council met under the Chairpersonship of the Union Minister for Finance &#038; Corporate Affairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34158,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34157\/revisions\/34158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nextias.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}