The GST Council on Friday evening announced some relief for small and medium enterprises on filing and payment of taxes, eased rules for exporters  and cut tax rates on over two dozen items.

“Assesses who have turnover of less than Rs 1.5 crore, instead of monthly returns, can now file quarterly returns,” chairman of the Council and finance minister Arun Jaitley  said, adding that “small people have lesser burden of paying taxes, but they have higher compliance burden.”

On goods procured for export purposes, it fixed a tax rate of 0.1 per cent and also allowed refund on that. Small service providers have been permitted to operate across multiple states without registering with the GST Network.

Eating out is expected to become cheaper while the GST rate on many items has been reduced from 12 per cent to 5 per cent, such as khakra and unbranded namkeen, zari work and unbranded ayurveda medicines; the rate on some stationery items and diesel engine parts was also cut to 18 per cent from the earlier 28 per cent.

Jaitley announced that the composition scheme limit has been increased from Rs 75 lakh to Rs 1 crore.

The measures come two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi voiced concern over implementation of GST, saying the government was ready to help small traders.

The Indian Express had also reported revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia as saying that moves to rationalise “processes” and “rates” across some product categories had been initiated to ease out the “pain points”. 

Many of the relief measures announced will help traders and groups in Gujarat which is set to go to the polls later this year.