J&K Governor’s Administration has decided to enhance threshold, composition limit under GST as proposed by the GST Council in its 32nd meeting held here today.The 32nd GST Council meeting was held under the Chairmanship of Union Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley.The State of Jammu and Kashmir was represented by Advisor to Governor, Kewal Kumar Sharma who also holds the charges of Finance Department.Principal Secretary Finance, J&K, Navin K Choudhary and Commissioner State Taxes, P K Bhat were also present at the meeting.On the recommendation of a group of ministers constituted for this purpose- the major decisions taken in meeting were related to enhancement of threshold limit for seeking registration and raising the limit for composition scheme under the GST law.For the benefit of small and marginal businesses, the Government of Jammu and Kashmir decided to opt the threshold for registration in respect of goods to Rs. 40 lakh despite being a special category state.
J&K Governor’s Administration also opted to raise the limit of composition to Rs 1.5 crore from current limit of Rs. 1.00 crore to benefit small traders and manufacturers who will now pay quarterly tax and have to file annual return only thereby reducing their compliance burden. These decisions are to be implemented by the Government from April 2019.Advisor to Governor, Kewal Kumar Sharma, while taking part in the discussion during the meeting stated that these measures will ease the compliance burden on the dealers simultaneously relieving the small and marginal dealers from seeking registration under GST law.The Advisor also supported the proposal for composition scheme to small service providers having an annual turnover of Rs 50 lakhs in order to provide relief to small businesses in this sector.The GST Council also decided to introduce a free billing and accounting software for small businesses having an annual turnover of Rs 1.5 crore.The Advisor supported the proposal and the initiative taken by the Goods and Services Tax Council (GSTC) which will provide assistance and necessary support to the small and marginal traders/manufacturers in the field of accounting for better and easy compliance under the GST law.