12 Jun , 2021 By : Kanchan Joshi
GST Council meeting: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will chair the 44th GST Council meeting via video conferencing at 11 am in New Delhi today, informed the Finance Ministry on Friday. The meeting will be attended by MoS Finance Anurag Thakur besides Finance Ministers of States and Union Territories and senior officers from central and state governments.
Today, the Council is expected to take a decision on relief in respect of Covid related individual items based on the report of Group of Ministers (GoM), which was set up after last round of meeting.
43rd GST Council meeting was held on May 28. In that meeting, the Council had recommended full exemption from IGST on a number of Covid related goods such as medical oxygen, oxygen concentrators, and other oxygen storage and transportation equipment, certain diagnostic markers test kits, and Covid vaccines.
The exemptions were applicable even if these products were imported on payment basis for donating to the government or on the recommendation of state authority to any relief agency. The exemption is valid up to August 31, 2021.
However, for individual items, the Council decided to constitute a Group of Ministers (GoM). "As regards individual items, it was decided to constitute a Group of Ministers to go into the need for further relief to COVID-19 related individual items immediately," the finance ministry said in press statement.
In the last meeting, the GST Council also decided to reduce the compliance burden of small taxpayers and medium-sized taxpayers and recommended an amnesty scheme for reducing late fee payable, to provide relief to small taxpayers.
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