Whether your health insurance and life insurance premium will be tax-free or not, a big meeting related to GST is going to be held tomorrow to discuss the issues related to this topic. Read this news…
Some time ago, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari wrote a letter to the country’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman requesting to make the premium of health and life insurance tax-free. Since then, there has been a lot of brainstorming on this topic from the common people to the government. Now an important meeting related to GST is going to be held to discuss the issues related to this. It is possible that a concrete consensus may be reached on making the insurance premium tax-free.
The GST Council takes the final decision on GST in the country. The GST Council is chaired by the Finance Minister of the country and includes the Finance Ministers of all the states or their representatives. In the last meeting of the GST Council, the issue of making insurance premium tax-free was also raised, but a final consensus could not be reached then.
Keeping this in mind, the GST Council had formed two ministerial panels to discuss this matter in detail and to rationalize the GST rates. Now the meeting of these ministerial groups is to be held on October 19. These groups will discuss rationalizing, exempting or reducing the current 18 percent rate of GST on insurance premium. There will also be a discussion on GST rates.
The path to the decision will emerge from Bihar
To make health insurance and life insurance premium tax-free, a 13-member ministerial group has also been formed under the chairmanship of Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Chaudhary. After the formation of this group of ministers, its first meeting is to be held tomorrow. Ministers from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Gujarat, Meghalaya, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and Telangana have been included in this group of ministers.
This group of ministers will prepare its report on tax on insurance premium by the end of October and submit it to the GST Council. Then the decision on whether GST on insurance premium should be removed or reduced will be taken in the GST Council meeting.
Apart from this, another ministerial group headed by Bihar’s Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Chaudhary will present its recommendations on rationalizing the GST rates. According to media reports, this group will also give its recommendations on merging the GST rates of 12 and 18 percent. Currently, there are 4 rates of tax under GST. These rates are 5, 12, 18 and 28 percent.
