GST Council reduces taxes on helicopter services for religious travel to 5 per cent, says Uttarakhand FM

Uttarakhand Finance Minister Prem Chand Agarwal said the GST Council on Monday decided to cut taxes on helicopter services for religious travel to 5 per cent.

"Helicopter services for religious purposes like Kedarnath, Badrinath has been reduced to 5 per cent from 18 per cent. There was no clarity on this. After this, there will be clarity," a report by PTI quoted Agarwal as saying.

The 54th GST Council, chaired by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharman, met on Monday, September 9. The GST Council, consists of the Union Finance Minister and representatives from all States and Union Territories. It is established to decide on various aspects of GST, including tax rates, exemptions, and administrative procedures.

The last meeting of the GST Council was held on June 22.

The council meeting on Monday was supposed to discuss issues such as lowering taxes on life and health insurance premiums and levying GST on payment aggregators for small digital transactions up to ₹2,000 through credit and debit cards.

Agarwal also stated that the GST Council has discussed the issue of levying 18 per cent GST on payment aggregators (PAs), such as BillDesk and CCAvenue, for small digital transactions up to ₹2,000 through debit and credit cards to the fitment committee, the PTI report said.

It added that the council has also deliberated on the fitment committee report on the taxes on life and health insurance premiums. Presently, payment aggregators are not required to pay GST on transactions amounting to less than ₹2,000.

In 2023-24, the total tax collected by the centre and the states was ₹8,262.94 crore through GST on health insurance premiums, whereas the states and the centre collected ₹1,484.36 crore on account of GST on health reinsurance premiums.

GST on insurance premiums discussed

The topic of GST on insurance premiums was extensively discussed in Parliament, where opposition leaders sought to remove taxes on health and life insurance premiums.

Earlier, Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari wrote a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman requesting the same.