Council to discuss revision of GST rates on more items

New Delhi: The Goods and Services Tax Council will hold its next meeting, chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, here on 18 June to discuss revision of GST rates on some more items and approval of draft rules.[caption id="attachment_2940664" align="alignleft" width="380"] Representational image. Reuters[/caption]Jaitley will chair the 17th meeting of the GST at Vigyan Bhavan, the Finance Ministry said on Thursday."The main agenda items of the meeting include confirmation of the minutes of the 16th GST Council meeting held on 11 June, approval of draft GST Rules and related Forms for Advance Ruling, Appeals and Revision, Assessment and Audit, E-Way Bill and Anti-Profiteering along with fitment/adjustment of GST rates on certain items among others," a statement said.The meeting will also be attended among others by the finance ministers of different states and union territories.The Council earlier revised the rates of 66 items of the 133 for which representations had been received seeking change from the fitments originally made in the four-slab indirect tax structure.On Entertainment Tax, the GST Council decided on a two-slab structure for cinema tickets, whereby those costing less than Rs 100 would be taxed less at 18 per cent while those above will attract 28 percent tax.In order to encourage job work outsourcing in sectors like diamond, leather, textiles, jewellery and printing, where workers take the work home, the GST rate has been reduced to 5 percent.The tax on cashew has been cut from 12 to 5 percent. Packaged foods like food and vegetable products such as pickles, chutnies, ketchup and instant food mixes, which historically were taxed at 18 percent, would be taxed at 12 percent.Tax on cutlery will come down from 18 to 12 percent while that on computer printers will be lowered from 28 to 18 percent. Insulin and agarbatti will go down from 12 to 5 percent.Tax on school bags has been lowered from 28 to 18 percent and on exercise books from 18 to 12 percent.Besides, under the composition scheme for traders, manufacturers and restaurants, the threshold limit was increased up to Rs 75 lakh against Rs 50 lakh earlier.