GST council meet remains inconclusive over dual control issue, state finance ministers to meet on Nov 20 again

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) council meet called to to decide on tax rate, including the levy of cess and sort out the vexed issue of jurisdiction over assessees remained inconclusive on Friday over the issue of dual control of service tax assessees.

Union finance minister Arun Jaitley said that state finance minister will meet on November 20 to sort out the pending issues.

Interacting with journalists after the meet, Jaitley said that the ministry is trying to pass the supporting GST legislations in the winter session of Parliament. 

"So far about 10 important issues have been resolved and decision have been taken in the GST council meet," Jaitley said.

"Further, we will have informal meet of ministers on November 20th. After this informal meet, we'll have a council meet on Nov 24th and 25th," Jaitley said.

#GST Council meeting remains inconclusive on dual control issue; state FMs to meet on Nov 20 to sort out pending issues. (File pic) pic.twitter.com/0Vj2W2hsKw

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) November 4, 2016

Here are the highlights of what Jaitley said: 

# Tax exemption limit under GST will be Rs 20 lakhs, further 4 drafts will be prepared for discussion

# Once software based tax assessment will be in place it will be of great help to the taxpayers and the industry

#Can’t have two competing assessing authorities for same assessee. We need clear guidelines on the complex and contentious issues

# One suggestion is to divide the base of assessees horizontally, between centre and states, with threshold of Rs 1.5crore turnover, the other suggestion is to divide base of assessees vertically without a threshold

# Drafts will be provided to all states and they will be given time to review them. On 24 & 25 Nov, drafts will come back to council