The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council has agreed to a slew of changes which includes an agreement to ease compliance bottlenecks for e-commerce suppliers, according to people in the know.
This means that e-commerce suppliers will now be allowed to register under the composition scheme to ease registration and reduce their tax outgo.
Currently, suppliers supplying through e-commerce are required to take compulsory GST registration. Also, businesses with a turnover of up to Rs 1.5 crore and making e-commerce supplies would be allowed to opt for the composition scheme, which offers a lower rate of tax and simpler compliance.
Currently, businesses supplying through e-commerce cannot avail of the composition scheme. The changes would bring in parity between entities that are doing business through either online or offline mode under GST.
The GST Council in its two-day meeting which started yesterday is discussing an array of issues, including a mechanism for compensating states for revenue loss, tax rate tweaks in some items and relaxed registration norms for small online suppliers.
Other changes to ease compliance and tax collection
CNBC-TV18 has also learnt that the Council has allowed amendments in GSTR3B which is the monthly GST return to be filed by taxpayers.
Moreover, government-run NIC (National Informatics Centre) will be used as another platform to register e-invoices.
The Council has also agreed to have as many as six invoice registration portals in the next six months to provide adequate backend IT infrastructure to handle the current e-invoice load.
Both the centre and states have been now allowed to issue Show Cause Notice irrespective of the fact whether the taxpayer falls in their jurisdiction or not in a bid to plug leakages.
