57th GST Council Meeting: Arrest Powers Removed, ₹5 Crore Prosecution Threshold and 1 April 2027 Rollout

The 57th GST Council meeting took place on Thursday, 8 October 2026 at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman chaired it, with Revenue Secretary Arvind Shrivastava and CBIC Chairman Vivek Chaturvedi present. Rates were off the table: officials had signalled before the meeting that tax slabs would not be taken up, and the minister confirmed that afterwards. What the Council did clear was a set of administrative and procedural changes — decriminalisation, faster refunds, easier registration, a wider input tax credit (ITC) net and a fresh definition of service exports. The stated rollout date for the package is 1 April 2027.

Search interest in the phrase "57th gst council meeting" rose in India around the meeting. Google Trends logged about 2,000 approximate searches and 300% growth for the term in the 24 hours up to its 9 October 2026 observation (09:04 UTC), alongside related queries such as "gst council" and "gst council meeting 2026". That number reflects search activity only — not website traffic, and not confirmation of any claim about the decisions.

Arrest powers withdrawn, prosecution threshold raised to ₹5 crore

The biggest shift is in enforcement. As The Hindu reported, the Council recommended that GST officers lose their power to arrest under Section 69, and that the threshold at which prosecution can be launched move from ₹1 crore to ₹5 crore. The general penalty comes down from ₹25,000 to ₹10,000. The Economic Times reported that a number of criminal offences would be reclassified as civil, and that e-way bill rules would be tidied up.

Two procedural guardrails were also announced. Only officers of the State where a consignment originates, or where it is headed, may inspect, detain or seize it — officials in States along the route cannot step in. Such action requires clearance from a joint commissioner-level officer and must rest on specific intelligence. Separately, no notice will be issued where the tax involved is under ₹10,000, and notices already sent below that amount will be pulled back.

Registration, refunds and a broader input tax credit

Registration is being flipped from a white-list to a black-list approach: most applications get through, with rejections reserved for a minority. The government says automatic registration inside three working days is already granted to 61% of taxpayers. Small sellers on e-commerce platforms will be able to register in their home State alone instead of in every State they ship to, and the amendment and cancellation processes are being simplified.

On refunds, the target is to acknowledge a claim within 10 days rather than 15, and to release 90% of the amount within three working days of that acknowledgement, after a risk check drawing on Customs and banking data.

ITC is being extended to items that were previously excluded: employee health and life cover, outdoor catering, telecom towers, pipelines outside factory premises, some free samples, and expired goods that have to be destroyed. Tax paid on plant and machinery — not claimable as credit until now — will be refunded every month over five years, and that includes tax on services.

Service exports: overseas branches and work done on Indian soil

Indian exporters who route business through branches abroad could not previously count that work as exports; the Council has now allowed them to claim export benefits. It has also widened what counts as a service export: services such as testing, repair, certification and research performed in India for an overseas client will qualify even when the goods never leave the country — the case, for instance, of a phone or car sent here for testing and then destroyed. When an export payment is treated as received will now follow Reserve Bank of India rules.

What is still pending, and why 1 April 2027 is a plan rather than a settled date

Two ITC proposals were held over: the amendment to Section 16(2) on supplier tax payment, and permission to claim credit on motor vehicles under Section 17(5). An officers' committee has three months on both, after which they return to the Council. The optional single annual return for business-to-consumer firms with turnover up to ₹5 crore got only in-principle approval and will be revisited at the next meeting. Faceless assessment for Central GST has been announced but is not running yet, and each State is expected to build its own version.

One date matters for working capital: refunds of accumulated input service credit under the inverted duty structure apply only to credit built up from 1 November 2026, not to earlier periods. Rate changes, meanwhile, will now be made once a year and take effect from 1 April of the following financial year.

At a glance: what changes and when

Decision	What changes	Status as of mid-October 2026
Arrest powers under Section 69	Withdrawn for GST officers	Announced 8 Oct 2026; stated rollout 1 Apr 2027
Prosecution threshold	₹1 crore to ₹5 crore	Announced 8 Oct 2026; stated rollout 1 Apr 2027
General penalty	₹25,000 to ₹10,000	Announced 8 Oct 2026; stated rollout 1 Apr 2027
Refund acknowledgement	15 days to 10 days; 90% released in 3 working days	Announced 8 Oct 2026; stated rollout 1 Apr 2027
ITC on motor vehicles; Section 16(2)	Deferred	Officers' committee, 3 months
Inverted duty structure refunds on input services	Prospective only	Credit accumulated from 1 Nov 2026

Read 1 April 2027 as an announced timeline, not a settled effective date. As of mid-October 2026, the Council's recommendations still have to be given effect through notifications and, where required, legal amendments. The September 2025 rate rationalisation — which cut GST to two slabs of 5% and 18% — is the backdrop to Sitharaman's claim that this tranche completes 99% of rate and process reforms, a characterisation from her press conference rather than an independently verified figure.