GST Council Decision: The GST Council convened a significant meeting on Monday. The GST Council primarily discussed two issues during this meeting. Should we reduce the GST rates on health insurance?
In addition to this, the issue of applying 18% GST to transactions made online using debit and credit cards that are less than Rs 2000 is also being discussed. The 54th meeting of the GST Council has resulted in several significant decisions.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who is chairing the meeting, said that there is a broad consensus in the council to reduce the 18 percent GST tax on health insurance premiums.
However, the GST Council meeting in November will make the final decision on this matter. At present, the insurance premium will not decrease.
In addition, we have decided to lower the GST rates on namkeen from 18 percent to 12 percent. Apart from this, there is a consensus on reducing the GST rates on some cancer medicines. The Finance Minister of Uttarakhand announced during the meeting the reduction of the GST on pilgrimage to 5%.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman led this meeting, where there was broad consensus to reduce the GST rate on health and life insurance premiums from the current 18 percent, although the GST Council will take the final decision.
The GST Council will decide the modalities in its next meeting. Therefore, the council meeting has postponed the decision to impose GST on insurance premiums. The GST Council has scheduled its next meeting for November.
Aside from this, the discussion focused on the announcement of imposing an 18% GST on payment aggregators such as BillDesk and CCAvenue for small online transactions up to Rs 2000 using debit and credit cards. However, the Fitment Committee has not yet made a decision on this matter.
Most states are in favor of lowering insurance premium tax rates.
According to sources, most states are in favor of reducing the rates of insurance premiums. Reducing the GST rates will benefit a significant number of policy holders. Because the premium amount will decrease. Prior to the introduction of GST, insurance premiums were subject to service tax.
In 2017, the implementation of the GST system included the service tax. The issue of taxing insurance premiums was also raised in Parliament. Opposition members had demanded exemption of health and life inspremiumspremium from GST.
Along with thiParliament also raised the issue of taxing insurance premiums. n Minister Nitin Gadkari also raised questions on this issue. Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had also written a lette; to thethen,ance Minister and appealed for relief from this tax, since then the opposition has been making this issue a part of political discourse.
