The 57th GST Council meeting has been postponed for a second time and will now be held on October 8 in New Delhi, with several proposals on compliance, enforcement, input tax credit and small-business registration expected to be considered.
The GST Council Secretariat cited “unavoidable circumstances” in an office memorandum issued on October 5. The meeting will begin at 11 am at the Summit Room of Bharat Mandapam. It was previously scheduled for October 7.
The meeting was initially planned for September 12 but was later deferred to October 7. The earlier postponement was linked to the BRICS summit held in New Delhi on September 12 and 13. The Council is chaired by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and includes representatives from the states and Union Territories.
The agenda is expected to include changes to GST registration, returns and refunds, measures to resolve disputes, and steps to improve the flow of input tax credit. The Council is also expected to consider a package of process and enforcement reforms aimed at simplifying compliance and making tax administration more proportionate.
One proposal under consideration, according to PTI sources cited in the report, would remove the power of GST officers to arrest taxpayers without judicial authorisation. The proposal concerns Section 69 of the Central GST Act, under which a Commissioner can currently authorise an officer to make an arrest when statutory conditions are met.
The Council may also consider raising the threshold for launching criminal prosecution from Rs 1 crore to Rs 5 crore. If approved, the change would reduce the number of cases in which criminal proceedings could be initiated. Routine disputes involving classification, valuation and input tax credit could be kept outside the criminal process under the proposals being considered.
Another proposal seeks to protect genuine buyers’ input tax credit when an upstream supplier defaults on tax payments. Under that approach, recovery action would instead be directed at the supplier responsible for the default. The Council may also examine easier GST registration requirements for small e-commerce sellers, including allowing platform warehouses to serve as registered places of business in states where sellers do not maintain their own premises.
The proposed registration change could affect small sellers seeking access to wider markets, while other measures reportedly include allowing employers to claim input tax credit on GST paid on employee insurance premiums. Simplification of GST registration and annual returns, along with steps to reduce low-value litigation, are also expected to be discussed.
The proposals would represent the next phase of GST reform, with the focus shifting from rate rationalisation to administrative processes, compliance, input tax credit access and enforcement. The Council’s 56th meeting in September 2025 had approved a major GST rate overhaul. The October 8 meeting is expected to focus mainly on process and administrative reforms, with final decisions dependent on the Council’s deliberations.
