GST Council for decriminalisation of some offences, doubling of prosecution threshold

New Delhi: The Goods & Ser vices Council, which met on Saturday recommended decriminalizing certain of fences and raised the thresh old for lunching prosecution from Rigors to Rs 2 crore except those linked to the offenced issuing fake invoices.

Malho said the Council had recommended decima noising three kinds of of fences They include: obstruct Tion or granting any officer in discharge of his duties; de liberate tampering of mattery al evade and failure tosupply the information.

To reduce the workload of courts, the Council also rec amended cutting the com- pounding amount from the prosent range of 50%-150% of tax amount to 25%-100%.

The Council headed by Union finance minister Nir- mala Sitharaman met vir- tonally and decided on a num ber of issues. Addressing a news conference after the meeting, the FM said the agenda and discussion on on ly eight could be completed as some state finance ministers had requested for an early end to the meeting as they had other committed business, she said the rest of the items would be taken up during the next moating of the Council, which she hoped would be an in-person meeting.

"In this Council meeting. there has not been any tax increase on any item. Everything that has been done is to issue clarifications where ambiguity of interpretation prevailed." said the FM.