GST shake-up: Council may rejig tax officers' panels

New Delhi: Nine years after the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax, the GST Council is likely to consider recasting its tax officers' committees, making them leaner as the indirect tax regime matures over time, sources said.

The structure of the committee, which supports the Council in overall functioning, is proposed to be recast into three consolidated bodies -- the Secretariat, the implementation committee, and a single standing committee of officers.

Currently, the GST tax officers' committee consists of the Secretariat, an implementation committee, eight standing committees, including Fitment and Law committees, and 18 sectoral groups.


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Sources said it was felt that after nine years the GST system has stabilised, and the rate structure was settled in full last year. And hence, the continuing work can be carried out by a leaner arrangement.

According to the new officers' committee structure under consideration, the GST implementation committee (GIC) remains the deciding body at the top. It takes up what the Secretariat refers to it. It decides matters delegated by the Council.

GIC would refer important matters to the Secretary, the Union Finance Minister or the Council as the case requires. It would continue to handle technology-related grievances.

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The new standing committee will do the technical work. It will examine proposals to amend the law, rules, notifications and forms, besides simplifying procedures and considering the representations received from trade and industry.

The membership of the standing committee will be drawn on the basis of each state's relative size in the system, and will rotate every two years. No state would hold a permanent seat, and the agenda before the committee would be shared with all states to get their views.

Sources said the proposed institutional reform is based on two principles -- proposals are to be owned politically from the outset, rather than working out among officers and then brought up for endorsement. Besides, transparency in the handling of proposals.

GST had subsumed a plethora of local taxes, like excise, service tax and VAT, and cesses into a unified one nation one tax. When GST was rolled out, every sector of the economy had questions about how it would apply to them, which required technical work. Hence, multiple committees were required to address all the emerging concerns, along with a Fitment Committee, which looked after tax rate proposals.

Sources said dismantling of the structure that was built at the time of GST launch on July 1, 2017, shows that the indirect tax has now stabilised.

"A leaner arrangement, with political ownership at the front and a single technical committee behind it, is what a settled tax system requires rather than one still being built," they added.