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TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
The GST Law is administered only based on the recommendations of the GST Council that are made from time to time. The conducting of at least two meetings in every year and at least one such meeting within every six months may ease the pressure on the council in terms of agenda points to be considered. The GST Council has so far met 56 times and 38 meetings have taken place during the last nine years post implementation. Of GST on 01/07/2017. This is a good indication as at least three meetings per annum have taken place up to March 2025.
It is to be recorded that the 55th meeting of the council took place on 21/12/2024 whereas the 56th meeting took place only on 03/09/2025 after a long gap of more than 8 months and that happens to be the only meeting held during the financial year 2025-26. This being so, we have not heard anything about the 57th GST Council meeting so far even after 8 full months.
It is not the case that GST issues are fully resolved and things are very comfortable and there is no need for any council meeting in the near future. Actually, it is the other way round as issues are mounting in all area in general and in construction industry in particular which are not being considered by the GST Council for ease of doing business in India. The members of Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India are having lot of issues to be resolved through the council. The issues have become more complex on ITC post budget amendment in section 17 (5) to nullify the effects of the decision of the Supreme Court in Safari retreats private limited case during 2025. To be more specific, the restrictions on availing ITC on construction activities as amended on 01/10/2025 with effect from 01/07/2017 itself is still allowing ITC when it is not on his own account. Tax experts differ in their views on eligibility of ITC on construction activities when the construction is not that of own office/establishment/factory but a mall to be let out in future.
This is one of the burning issues and the GST Council is expected to issue necessary guidelines in this matter. The second burning issue is deadline date kept under Section 112 (1) of the CGST Act presently as 30/06/2026 requires urgent and immediate relook as even when this article is being written as on 21/05/2026, there are only less that 10,000 e appeals that have been successfully e filed so far. The leading experts in the field of GST estimate the appeals in pipeline to be some where near five lakhs as on date.
It is million dollar question as to whether the e portal of the GSTAT is designed to accept 10,000 appeals in every 24 hours as the deadline date is fast approaching. While the taxpayers as well as tax professions are keeping their fingers crossed based on their expectations from GSTAT as well as GST Council that some thing will happen to resolve this burning issue, there are no symptoms as of now about the urgent convening of the 57th GST Council meeting.
One of the possible reasons for such slow filing of appeals is the readiness of the system to accept huge data. System glitches issues, time taken in registering with the portal, dual authentication through OTP, time taken for generation of OTP are the other possible reasons. The apprehension that additional 10% pre deposit requirement is a possible cause in not true as this payment of second 10% pre deposit is the one and only possible way to stay the recovery of balance 80%.
The long pending expectations from the GST Council are increasing the exemption limit for mandatory registration from 20 lakhs and 40 lakhs to 50 lakhs and One Crore respectively as the limits set on 01/07/2017 are long overdue for upward revision. The Income Tax slabs are modified in accordance with the current requirements whereas the GST Law also requires similar amendments to allow the GST officials to focus on large entrepreneurs and big corporates rather than having a very large number of small tax payers.
To strengthen this argument, the statement given by Honorable Finance Minister which reads as 'Ninety per cent of India's Goods and Services Tax (GST) collections are paid by the top 22% businesses having a turnover above Rs. 50 crore, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on March 21, 2023, dismissing an Oxfam report's conclusions that the richest 10% contribute a fraction of the GST kitty, while the poorest 50% contribute two-thirds of the revenues' may be placed on record. Thus, even by going with the statement of the Government, the bottom most 20 % of the taxpayers in GST may be contributing only a very small portion of the GST Collections and by suitably enhancing these limits, GST officials shall have manageable number of taxpayers paving time to focus on core issues rather than confirming demand based on GST return differences which only increases the litigation but no revenue is generated.
It may be concluded that the burning issues such as extension of time limit under section 112 (1), increase in monetary limit for registration requirements under GST and the consideration for resolving of the long pending real estate business issues may be addressed in full by the GST Council in June 2026 itself.