Following the 53rd meeting of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, many things ranging from student hostels to milk cans and railway platform tickets are set to be cheaper as they are either being exempted from the tax or their tax slabs are being rationalised.

In the 53rd GST Council’s meeting on Saturday, it was decided that hostels and railway platform tickets will be exempted from the GST.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that while hostels within educational institutions are already exempt from the GST, now hostels outside of the institutions would also be exempted.

“Service by way of hostel accommodation is presently not exempted, which are provided to students if they are outside of educational institutions. If they are within the educational institutions, then they are already exempted. Hostels which are for students which are within an educational institutions are already exempted. Now hostels which are for students but are not in an educational institutions are also getting exempted,” said Sitharaman.

Separately, Sitharaman also announced that all milk cans will be universally taxed at 12 per cent.

Moreover, the meeting also took decisions related to GST rates for packaging containers and railway services to the costumers.

Railways’ public services to be GST-exempt

The services of the railways to the generic public are set to be cheaper as they would be GST exempt.

These services include:

Separately, services to the railways by a special purpose vehicle (SPV) would also be tax-exempt. An SPV refers to a subsidiary of a parent company created for specific purposes. The SPVs of the railways include companies like Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL) and RailTel.

GST rationalised & reduced for packaging containers

Carons, boxes, and cases of both corrugated and non-corrugated paper or paper-board will be taxed at 12 per cent instead of previous rate of 18 per cent.

All milk cans, whether made of steel, iron, and aluminium, will be uniformly taxed at 12 per cent.

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GST Council meet: Hostels to platform tickets, here’s what will get cheaper