The 57th GST Council meeting has been rescheduled to October 8, 2026, starting at 11 am, moving one day later from the originally scheduled October 7 date. As per Zee News, this marks the second time the meeting has been rescheduled - it was originally scheduled for September 12 but was later deferred to October 7, with the earlier change linked to the BRICS summit held in New Delhi on September 12 and 13. The meeting will be held at the Summit Room, Bharat Mandapam, in New Delhi. An Office Memorandum issued by the GST Council Secretariat on Monday cited 'unavoidable circumstances' for the date change without providing further details. The memorandum was issued with the approval of the Revenue Secretary and signed by Shaifali G Singh, Commissioner, GST Council Secretariat. The change has been conveyed to members of the GST Council, with the secretariat requesting that the revised schedule be brought to the attention of the respective members. This marks the first GST Council meeting in more than a year, with the last meeting held on September 3-4, 2025, which approved the GST 2.0 overhaul.
As the GST Council prepares to meet on October 8, businesses and tax experts are prioritizing making working capital work again and reducing compliance burdens. According to Business Standard, the first priority is making GST paid on purchases adjustable against GST collected on sales, with particular focus on sectors such as FMCG and pharmaceuticals where GST paid on some inputs can be higher than the tax charged on finished products. Nimish Bhatia from Price Waterhouse & Co LLP said the industry seeks refunds for input services and capital goods in such cases, along with faster provisional refunds. For capital goods, the government could consider spreading refunds over five years, with a pro-rated refund for the remaining useful life of assets purchased before any such change. Refunds for goods exports have become relatively smoother after the customs and GST systems were integrated, but exporters of services continue to face difficulties in establishing whether a transaction qualifies as an export and in disputes over where a service is considered supplied. Denial of input tax credits to genuine buyers due to supplier's failure to pay tax has been a pain point for the industry for a long time, with experts suggesting making the supplier liable for default in the first instance with safeguards to protect bona fide buyers.
The GST Council is set to deliberate on comprehensive process reforms aimed at making GST compliance easier for businesses and taxpayers at the October 8 meeting. According to Zee News, the reforms focus on five key areas including process reforms, structural reforms, ease of doing business, e-commerce and exports of services. Refunds are proposed to be acknowledged within 10 days, with 90% released on a risk check after necessary details are drawn from customs and banking systems in an automated mode to further facilitate ease of doing business. For filing returns, the objective is to streamline the process in which corrections are recorded properly so that there is a trail of changes and corresponding changes are recorded in the buyer's ledger automatically. This is called invoice matching so that input tax credit is validated at the stage of recording itself, which would avoid a large number of mismatch notices being issued. For 61% of taxpayers, registration is already being granted in three working days without an officer, while the process is being streamlined for the remaining taxpayers to avoid unnecessary queries and rejections. Closing a business is to be made as simple as starting one, with a registration suspended for a procedural lapse to restore itself (without an officer's intervention) once the lapse is made good.
A major concern for businesses is how often they have to defend the same transaction to different tax authorities, with companies operating across several states facing scrutiny from multiple authorities. As per Business Standard, Ajay Agarwal from Spark Minda Group said this was a significant burden for auto component manufacturers, noting "the issue is not only the number of notices but also the amount of historical transaction data that has to be extracted, reconciled and presented." Tax lawyer Ritesh Kanodia highlighted that businesses face overlapping proceedings such as state GST audit followed by scrutiny from another authority on the same underlying transactions. The problem is compounded by the absence of a formal closure mechanism, without a clear record that an issue has already been examined and closed, businesses can be asked for the same information again. Bhatia has proposed appointing one assessing authority for a company's operations across India, along with a common taxpayer profile, which could reduce the need for businesses to submit the same records in multiple proceedings. The aim is not to avoid scrutiny but to avoid doing the same work repeatedly.
The GST Council is set to deliberate on next-generation refund processing reforms that could significantly reduce processing times. According to The Times of India, the Council will seek to slash the refund period to around 17 days, which will include a maximum 10 days for acknowledgement, beyond which it will be deemed to have been acknowledged, and seven days for processing. Currently, acknowledgement itself can take 21-45 days and the idea is to process refunds faster, with officials noting that around 90% of the refunds are processed quickly. The reforms also focus on pruning the time taken for registering for a GST number through a more automated process, where the plan is to automate processes so that the time taken for the remaining 39% of applications is reduced from several days. However, officials emphasize that not all registrations take a long time as those for businesses below ₹2.5 lakh turnover are given within 34 minutes on an average. For small businesses operating across multiple states, the GST Council will consider steps to enable them to avoid the registration exercise across states if an e-commerce platform through which they sell has a recognised warehouse as a place of business, with officials noting that 'Overall, nine out of 10 sellers on platforms will gain'.
The GST Council is considering proposals to rationalise input tax credit (ITC) in real estate, construction, hospitality and tourism sectors, including areas where assets serve businesses directly and transactions between government-owned entities. As per Business Standard, ITC on pipelines laid outside factory premises that are fixed to the ground had fallen within the description of immovable property on which credit was not available, but since these pipelines are used to carry materials of the business, ITC could be allowed. The proposal would equally apply to industries that lay pipelines to move products between points outside the factory gate, such as refining, petrochemicals, fertilisers, gas distribution and water infrastructure, where pipelines account for a substantial part of capital expenditure. Telecom towers would also fall in the same bucket, with experts noting that relief of this nature could reduce the tax cost of large industrial and infrastructure projects where pipelines form a significant part of capital expenditure. Services are the fastest growing part of India's external trade, and in order to facilitate this sector, it is proposed that billing a foreign client through a branch abroad will not cost an Indian firm its export status. Testing, repair, certification and research done in India for a client abroad will qualify as exports even where the goods stay here, with one standard for when payment counts as received, aligned with the Reserve Bank's own rules, in place of two. ITC should be allowed in case of supplies such as supply of passenger motor vehicle, leasing, repair, renting of motor vehicles, health and life insurance, outdoor catering, construction of telecommunication tower and pipelines, free samples and expired goods - all are used in the furtherance of business, as noted by EY India tax practice leader Sameer Gupta.
The GST reforms are showing significant positive results with Gross GST collections rising 11.6% to ₹12.46 lakh crore during April-September 2026. As per Zee News, GST collections recorded double-digit annual growth in every month from June through September, with collections during the four-month period rising nearly 15%. Net GST collections (after refunds) grew 10.4% during the first half of the financial year, while aggregate SGST receipts of states, including their share of IGST settlements, grew about 16% during April-September. Reported consumer sales or B2C supplies increased 26.7% in the post-reform period, with GST registrations standing at about 1.71 crore at the end of August, up nearly 15% from a year earlier. Around ₹1.80 lakh crore was refunded during April-September, with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman calling greater predictability in refunds important for businesses. The value of reported taxable supplies grew 25.8% between October 2025 and July 2026 from a year earlier, demonstrating the effectiveness of the reform measures.
The GST Council is proposing to rationalise its committee structure by consolidating existing panels into three main bodies as the nine-year-old indirect tax regime has stabilised. According to Business Standard, the proposed structure will comprise the GST Secretariat, implementation committee and a single standing committee of officers, replacing several existing committees and sectoral groups. The Fitment Committee, which has been handling rate-related proposals since GST's 2017 launch, is likely to be wound up as technical work is now proposed to be handled through a leaner structure. The implementation committee will continue as the top decision-making body, while the proposed standing committee will examine proposals to amend laws, rules and forms, and consider representations from trade and industry. The membership will be based on each state's relative size in the GST system and rotate every two years, ensuring no permanent exclusion while maintaining federal representation. Businesses are not asking for another overhaul of the GST rate; they want the system to work better in practice by focusing on making working capital work again, reducing overlapping scrutiny, and simplifying compliance.
