GST Council Reduces Tax on Helicopter Services for Religious Travel to 5%, Says Uttarakhand FM Prem Chand Aggarwal

Uttarakhand Finance Minister Prem Chand Aggarwal announced on Monday that the GST Council has approved a reduction in the tax rate for helicopter services used for religious travel to 5 percent. This decision was made during the ongoing 54th meeting of the GST Council, which is being chaired by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

"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," Aggarwal told reporters.

The Council is expected to discuss various issues, including the potential reduction of taxes on life and health insurance premiums. Additionally, there will be deliberations on imposing GST on payment aggregators for small digital transactions up to Rs 2,000 made via debit and credit cards.

Agarwal also noted that the Council has referred the matter of imposing 18 percent GST on payment aggregators, such as BillDesk and CCAvenue, for small digital transactions up to Rs 2,000 made via debit and credit cards to the fitment committee. At present, payment aggregators are exempt from GST on transactions under this threshold. Additionally, the Council is expected to review a fitment committee report concerning the taxation of life and health insurance premiums.

In 2023-24, the Centre and states collected Rs 8,262.94 crore through GST on health insurance premium, while Rs 1,484.36 crore was collected on account of GST on health reinsurance premium.