Indore: Giving a heavy blow to the great expectations of anguished traders, decisions taken by GST council could hardly charm them even half way mark.
Following pressure from all kinds of traders, who were at the receiving end in compliance of GST rules, the powerful GST council has come up with certain new measures following its meeting held on Friday.
The council has exempted traders with annual turnover of up to Rs 1.5 crore from filing monthly returns of GST and made it quarterly for them. The limit of accepting the composition scheme is also extended from Rs 75 lakh to Rs 1 crore. Another major change the council has introduced was withholding the imposition of Reverse Charge Mechanism (RCM) and e-way provisions till March 31, 2018. However, the traders were not much happy with move, as they claimed that “Broadly the decisions are in favour of customers and panicky factors still remain the same.” They further said that while the quarterly return filing facility extended to all kinds of traders was appreciable, RCM and e-way provisions should be withdrawn for good.
Expressing unhappiness over the decisions, traders said that “These measures are just half mark of their problem, as they do not match their expectations completely.” In nutshell, their demand was actually exempting all the traders from filing GST returns quarterly.
What they say
There is some relief to traders; but there are still issues, which were not addressed by the council. Still same HSN code items are having different GST rates. Council has just postponed the compliance of RCM and e-way bill; whereas we hope they would be done away with
– Sushil Sureka
General Secretary, Ahilya Chamber of Commerce and Industry
Whatever decisions the council has taken are largely in favour of customers and traders are still in problem. There is no relief for them. Our prime demand was to reduce existing complexity in compliance of the GST, but there is no headway in that. RCM is just postponed, not cancelled. The GST portal is still running slow
– Hans Kumar Jain
President, Maharaja Tukojirao Cloth Market Traders Association
This is a cheer time for exporters. Refund for July by 10 October, for Aug by 18 October in e-wallet, as proposed by FIEO, will be introduced from April 1, 2018. In the interim period, exemption from IGST on advance, EPCG and EOUs and supply to merchant exporters at 0.1 per cent GST have been granted by the government
– Suber Rampurawala
Convener, FIEO MP-CG Chapter
