Traders’ body hail GST threshold of Rs 20 lakh
The Confederation of All India Traders' (CAIT) today hailed the GST Council's move to fix annual turnover limit for exemption at Rs 20 lakh. "It will take away large number of very small traders from the ambit of GST whose cost of compliance is much more than the cost of their livelihood earning," CAIT National President B C Bhartia and its Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said in a joint statement.
The traders' body said the move will also save the government from huge amount of administrative efforts and allow them to focus on widening the tax base.
Aiming to expedite the rollout of the new indirect tax regime from April 1, the GST Council today fixed an annual turnover limit for exemption at Rs 20 lakh and resolved that all cesses will be subsumed in the GST. While the next meeting of the Council on September 30 will finalise draft rules on granting exemptions, the GST rate and tax slabs would be decided at its three-day meeting beginning October 17. "We are eagerly looking at the finalisation of tax rates and other proposed provisions of GST. However, CAIT will urge the government to opt for avoiding any dual control of authorities as it will result into confusion among the traders," the traders' body said.
Regarding issues pertaining to dual control over smalltraders, it has been decided that states will have exclusive control over all dealers up to a revenue threshold of Rs 1.5crore in a year.
While a mechanism would be worked out for traders above Rs 1.5 crore to ensure that a dealer is regulated either by the Central government or the state government and not both. Meanwhile, a decision on contentious issues like exemption and threshold taken with consensus without voting in the first meeting of GST Council signals that the April 2017 rollout deadline is achievable, experts said. They also hailed the decision to enhance the annual turnover for exemption to Rs 20 lakh, saying it would be administratively easier for the government and several small businesses.