New Delhi: Newly appointed Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be chairing her first and the 35th meeting of the powerful federal indirect tax body, the GST Council, on Friday. The meet comes two weeks prior to the finance minister's maiden Union Budget 2019.
While no big tax rate cut is planned, state ministers as part of the discussions on budget FY20 are expected to urge Sitharaman to consider issues of local importance such as setting up of higher education institutions, central support for dealing with natural disasters, higher import tariff protection to locally produced items and funds for infrastructure creation. Drought like situation in parts of the country is also expected to figure in the discussions.
The agenda of the meeting will also include integration of GST e-way bill system with NHAI's FASTag mechanism from April 1, 2020, to help track movement of goods and check GST evasion.
Besides, the Council would also deliberate on setting up a national bench of the Appellate Authority for Advance Ruling (AAAR) to reconcile the contradictory orders on similar issues passed by Authority for Advance Ruling (AARs) in different states, a move aimed at providing certainty to taxpayers.
With regard to extension of the National Anti-Profiteering Authority (NAA), the Council will consider extending its tenure by one year till November 30, 2020. Soon after the GST was rolled out from July 1, 2017, the government had approved setting up NAA for two years to deal with complaints by consumers against companies for not passing on GST rate cut benefits.
The NAA came into existence on November 30, 2017, after its Chairman B N Sharma assumed charge. So far, the NAA has passed 67 orders in various cases and complaints still keep coming in. The Council is also likely to discuss a mechanism for single point sanctioning and processing GST refunds.
Sitharaman's predecessor Arun Jaitley had ensured all decisions of the Council were consensus-based without resorting to voting. To break the ice, Sitharaman will meet state finance ministers in the forenoon and seek their suggestions on union budget for FY20. The GST Council meeting will take place in the afternoon.
The voting rights in Council are such that neither the union government, nor the state governments together can get a decision passed without the consent of the other. Often, proposals have either been modified or separate carve outs been made in the case of North Eastern states, the economies of which are comparatively smaller than that of the rest of the country.
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