Composition Scheme May Stretch to Inter-State Businesses

The five member GoM [Group of Ministers], led by the Assam Finance Minister, Mr. Himanta Biswa Sarma, who have been tasked to fine tune and make the composition scheme more lucrative and easy to adopt is meeting on 29^th October’17 with the industry reps to deeply discuss about the composition scheme, tax slabs for the restaurants and related issues.

The internal sources reveal that although there is an overall consensus about the following, however the coming meeting on Sunday will have a final round of discussions before finally adding them to their report, which is to be presented in the next GST Council meeting on November 10^th in Guwahati.

• Intra-state business owners could now apply for being a part of the composition scheme.
• Allow Input Tax Credit in the composition scheme.

Both these are mega changes and will impact the economy and the flow of businesses in a massive incremental way.

As the 1^st decision is expected to fuel the number of composite payers instantly and drastically, the 2^nd verdict will give a blow to the revenues collected by the government. The 2^nd aspect needs to be well calculated, projected and handled with a futuristic approach.

The ministry of small and medium enterprises is also put to work to engage with the industry reps about their definition of the composition scheme and ways to adding icing to it. The Sunday discussions of the GoM are supposed to be revolving about whether or not, the turnover of the exempted goods can be excluded from the total turnover threshold for levying tax in the composition scheme.

The threshold of the composition scheme have recently been extended in the last GST Council meeting to 1 crore from the earlier 75 lakhs, wherein the composition tax payers pay a flat rate of tax and a quarterly return. The last date to opt for the scheme has also been moved to March 31^st from October 1^st.

Approximately 1/6^th of the 8.9 million, i.e. 1.5 million GST assesses have already opted for the composition scheme and figures are bound to roar, post these projected announcements.

Industry experts agree, that there reflects a genuine effort with a healthy intent for making the GST enter the lives of the people, as smoothly as it can be.

As reported in Business Standard