On October 6th, 2017, the GST Council, headed by union finance minister Arun Jaitley, announced a number of changes in the GST Structure for SMEs, small businesses and traders. Though it is very early to make any predictions about the way traders will react to the announcements, the initial trend seems in favour of them and they are likely to welcome the decisions, provided that the small traders were most affected by the introduction of GST from July 1st.
One of the biggest announcements made by the GST council included that the small businesses, who have an annual turnover of less than ₹1.5 Crore, will not have to file the monthly returns as suggested before. These traders can file quarterly returns from now onwards. Along with that, the threshold for composition scheme has been increased from ₹75 lakhs to ₹1 crore and it is going to impact a lot of traders. Also, the traders who are selling via eCommerce stores, will not have to deduct 1% TDS, which was earlier made mandatory. The TDS and TCS have been revoked till April 2018 and the council will take a decision on this in the upcoming meetings.
Along with relaxing the filing and taxation norms, the government also cut down the tax rate on 27 items. Majority of these items included food items, man-made yarn and various type of waste (rubber, plastic and electronic).
The GST Council also said that it is considering the changes for a number of other items and an announcement on any further development will soon follow. The GST council will hold its next meeting on November 10th and 11th in Guwahati.