GST rates 2017: Legal services, education, health are tax free

Legal services, education and healthcare are exempted from the new GST regime.

New Delhi, May 20: Three sectors that are going to provide tax free services to consumers once the Goods and Services Tax regime will kick-start from July 1 across the country are legal services, healthcare and education.

The announcement was made by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at the two-day-long meeting of the GST Council that ended in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on Friday.

Jaitley said, "Most services exempted from the tax will continue to be exempted under the GST."

The GST Council finalised tax rates on 80-90 percent of goods and services under the four-slab structure with essential items of daily use being kept in the lowest bracket of 5 percent.

The GST will be a national sales tax that will be levied on consumption of goods or use of services.

It will replace 16 current levies -- seven central taxes like excise duty and service tax and nine state taxes like VAT and entertainment tax -- thereby creating India as one market with one tax rate.

With the GST, India will join select league of nations with a goods and service tax.

OneIndia News