The all-powerful GST Council at its meeting in Chandigarh this week is likely to make changes in goods and services tax (GST) rates on a handful of items and may go with the officers panel’s recommendations to maintain status quo in rates of over 215 items.
The 47th meeting of the GST Council, headed by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and comprising representatives of all states and UTs, is scheduled for June 28-29. The Council is meeting after a gap of six months.
Apart from rate rationalisation, the Council is expected to see a stormy discussion around compensation payout to states with Opposition-ruled states aggressively pushing for its continuation beyond the 5-year period which ends in June.
Major changes proposed by the officers’ panel or the Fitment Committee in the tax rates are a uniform 5 per cent GST rate on prostheses (artificial limbs) and orthopaedic implants (trauma, spine, and arthoplasty implants). Besides, orthoses (splints, braces, belts and calipers) too have been proposed in the lowest bracket of 5 per cent.
Currently, these goods attract tax rate of either 12 and 5 per cent.
The committee has also recommended reduction in GST rate on ropeway travel to 5 per cent from 18 per cent currently with ITC, Himachal Pradesh placing this request before the GST Council in September last year.
It also suggested that GST rate on ostomy appliances (including pouch or flange, stoma adhesive paste, barrier cream, irrigator kit, sleeves, belt, micro-pore tapes) should be reduced to 5 per cent, from 12 per cent at present.
Also, tax rates on sewage treated water is likely to be cut to ‘nil’. Currently, an ambiguity in wordings in the GST rates slab has led to two orders from Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR) stating that sewage treated water attracts 18 per cent GST rate.