New Delhi, December 18: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday headed the 38th meeting of the Goods and Services Tax Council meeting and extended the return filing deadline for GSTR 9 and GSTR 9C for 2017-18 to January 31, 2020, which was earlier set to December 31, 2019. Apart from this, the GST council also decided to constitute a Grievance Redressal Committees (GRC) at zonal or state level.

According to the details, reveived from the Ministry of Finance, the GRC will be constitute both CGST and SGST officers and include representatives of trade and industry and other GST stakeholders -- GST practitioners and GSTN etc. The Ministry informed that the GRCs will address the grievances of specific nature of taxpayers at the zonal or state level. Finance Ministry Issues Guidelines For Revenue Dept Officers, Asks Them to Boost Monthly GST Collection to Rs 1.1 Lakh Crore.

The Council decided to fix a uniform tax rate of 28 percent on both state and private lottery and stated that the new rate for lottery will come into effect from March 2020. The Council also announced its decision to rationalise tax rate on woven and non-woven bags to 18 percent, adding exemption has been given on long-term lease for industrial plots to facilitate setting up of industrial parks.

Among the major decisions announced by the Union Finance Minister include:

1) Extension of return filing deadline for GSTR 9 and GSTR 9C for 2017-18 to January 31, 2020, which was earlier set to December 31, 2019.

2) Measures, under discussion to improve filing of FORM GSTR-1, were seen light of the day. They include:

a) Waiver of late fee for all taxpayers in respect of all pending form GSTR-1 from July 2017 to November 2019, if the same are filed by January 10, 2020.

b) E-way Bill to be blocked for taxpayers who have not filed their FORM GSTR-1 for two tax periods.

3) Input tax credit to the recipient -- whose invoices are not reflected in his FORM GSTR-2A -- would be restricted to 10 percent of the eligible credit of the invoices reflected in his/her FORM GSTR-2A.

4) Suitable action to be taken for blocking of fraudulently availed input tax credit to check menace of fake invoices.

5) Government to issue a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for tax officers who would take taken in cases of non-filing of FORM GSTR 3B returns.

6) The Council decided to extend the last date of filing GST returns for the month of November 2019 for a few North Eastern States.

7) And the last decision that was taken by the Council was to approve various law amendments which will be introduced in Budget 2020.

Earlier on Tuesday, Finance Ministry has set a Rs 1.1 lakh crore monthly GST collection target for the remaining four months of 2019-20 financial year. A finance ministry official said that tax officials have been asked to achieve a target of Rs 1.25 lakh crore for at least one out of these four months.

(With inputs from agencies)

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Dec 19, 2019 12:06 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).