GST Council meeting today: What's on agenda?

New Delhi, July 25: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will chair the 36th meeting of the GST Council through videoconferencing in Delhi today. This will be the first GST Council meeting after the Union Budget was placed before the parliament in July 5 and Sitharaman's second one.

The Council is likely to decide the valuation of goods and services in solar power generating systems and wind turbine projects for the purposes of levying GST.

Among other issues, the GST Council is expected to announce its decision on lowering tax rates for electric vehicles, solar power projects and rationalisation of GST rates on lottery.

The GST Council is also likely to look at the issue of taxation of lotteries. At present, there are two rates of GST on lottery. A 12% GST is levied on lottery run by state government and 28% GST is levied on lotteries authorised by state government.

To push domestic manufacturing of e-vehicles, the Centre proposed to the Council to slash GST rates to 5 per cent from 12 per cent.

GST rate for petrol and diesel cars and hybrid vehicles is already at the highest bracket of 28 per cent plus cess.

The Delhi High Court had in May asked the GST council to take a relook at the taxation structure following industry petition.

The government had earlier this year said that for the purpose of taxing solar power projects, 70 per cent of contract value would be treated as goods -- taxable at 5 per cent, and balance 30 per cent as services -- taxable at 18 per cent.

The last meeting of the GST Council was held on June 21 where the last date for filing of GST returns for FY 2017-18 was extended by two months to August 2019.

It had also approved the use of Aadhaar by businesses to register with GST Network (GSTN) and the imposition of a penalty of up to 10% on entities not passing on benefits of GST rate cuts to consumers.