25th GST Council Meeting held on 18th January, 2018 at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi

With the series of GST Meetings, the 25th GST Council Meeting held in Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi. The meeting had an extraordinary significance as the key decisions were expected to come out ahead of the Union Budget, which is to be presented on 1st . Februrary . 2018. The abstract of the meeting is as below:
1: The E-way Bill System testing will continue till 25th, January, 2018. The provision of carrying the E-Way Bill, when moving of goods of over Rs. 50000 in value between the states will be implemented from the 1st . February . 2018.
2: 15 States agreed on implementing Intra-State E-Way Bills, said Hon'ble Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
3: GST Council will take up bringing real estate, electric duty, petroleum products under GST in its next meeting. A lot of tax evasion can be plugged through E-way bill and those who do not take e-way bill will be penalised, said the Bihar Finance Minister Sushil Modi.
4: For reducing the complaince burden for the taxpayers, the Council whirled around the idea of registered entities for continuing to file the return in the GSTR 3B Form while moving to a system where the supplier invoice captures details of the tranactions.
5: The Council has not yet finalised on any decision regarding simplifying the process of GST filing. The matter though was discussed and Nandan Nilekani gave a detailed presentation on the matter, Finance Minister said.
6: The GST Council reviewed the Revenue Collection and the Finance Minister stated that the collection from the Composition Scheme is not encouraging as the collection recorded amounts to only Rs. 307 Crores and which brings the things to a conclusion that there seems to be cases of under declaration.
7: The GST Council accepts the revised rates on the 29 Goods and 53 Categories of the Services on the Committee's Recommendations. The New rates which have been finalised for the 29 Goods and the 53 Services categories will come into force from 25th . January . 2018, said the Hon'ble Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
8: The fitment committee will fix the rates for about the 40 Handicrafts items and a few more items may be added to the list shortly, Jaitley added.
9: The Panel decided to divide Rs. 35000 Crore Integrated GST collections between the States and the Centre. The division of the IGST Credit will boost the Indirect Tax position of both the Central and State Governments, said the Hon'ble Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.
10: The GST council was unable to reach to any Conclusions on bringing the petroleum products and the real estate under the ambit of GST. However, the it is expected the next GST Council Meeting may consider a decision on bringing items like Crude Oil, Natural Gas, Petrol, Diesel, ATF and Real Estate within the GST Purview, said Arun Jaitley.