GST Council to meet in Srinagar today

The Goods and Service Tax (GST) Council will meet in Srinagar on Thursday to deliberate on tax rates on commodities and services. This will be the 14th meeting of the council and will be held at the Sher-i-Kashmir International Conference Centre.

The meeting will be chaired by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. It will be attended by finance ministers of all states and union territories.

It is expected that the meeting will deliberate and decide on the tax rates that will apply to various goods and services that have a bearing on the general public.

The next two days will see the council fitting most of the goods and services in the 5, 12, 18 or 28 per cent tax bracket.

The new rates fixed by the council will be charged from July 1, the scheduled date for rollout of GST.

The tax rates will be decided in a fashion to keep their impact on inflation as well as revenues to the government near neutral.

The GST will be a national sales tax that will be levied on consumption of goods or use of services.

It will replace seven central taxes like excise duty and service tax and nine state taxes like VAT and entertainment tax, thereby creating India as one market with one tax rate.