57th GST Council Meeting: What Changes for Your Billing Software

As of 3 October 2026. The meeting was postponed from 12 September and is reported to take place on 7 October 2026, with officers' meetings on 5 and 6 October; we will update this post after the Council's official press release.

Key fact	Detail
Meeting	57th GST Council meeting, New Delhi
Date	Reported for 7 October 2026 (originally 12 September 2026)
Expected agenda	Input tax credit, refunds, inverted duty structure and compliance matters (reported, not officially published)
Who it affects	Every GST-registered business and its billing and accounting software
Official source	GST Council (gstcouncil.gov.in)

This guide is for business owners, accountants and IT managers who run GST billing or accounting software in India. After reading it you will know what is reported to be on the Council's table, what changed at the last meeting, and which settings in your billing system you should check now so you can apply any decision on the date it takes effect.

When is the 57th GST Council meeting

The 57th GST Council meeting is reported to be scheduled for 7 October 2026 in New Delhi, after it was postponed from 12 September 2026. Officers' meetings are reported for 5 and 6 October to prepare the agenda.

Reports attribute the postponement to a clash with an international summit held in the same week. The Council has not published a final agenda as of this writing. Treat every agenda item below as reported, and wait for the official press release and CBIC notifications before changing tax rates in production.

Decisions taken at a Council meeting do not apply on the day of the meeting. They apply from the date set in the notifications that follow, which can be days or weeks later. That gap is the window your software team works in.

What is expected on the agenda for October 2026

The October 2026 agenda is reported to include input tax credit restrictions, refund processes, inverted duty structure corrections and compliance simplification. None of these is confirmed until the Council publishes its decisions.

• Input tax credit: reports mention proposals to ease restrictions on some ITC claims. Any change would affect how purchase entries are classified as eligible or blocked.
• Refunds: faster or simpler refunds, especially for exporters and businesses with accumulated credit.
• Inverted duty structure: where input tax is higher than output tax, which builds up credit. Changes here matter for textiles, some engineering goods and fertilisers.
• Compliance: return filing, IMS and reconciliation procedures.

What changed at the 56th GST Council meeting

The 56th meeting, held on 3 and 4 September 2025, moved GST to two main slabs of 5% and 18% plus a 40% special rate for select goods, with most changes effective from 22 September 2025. This is often called GST 2.0.

That change is the best recent example of what a Council decision does to billing software. Thousands of HSN codes changed rates with roughly three weeks of notice. Businesses whose item masters stored a fixed tax rate per item had to edit every product by hand, and many invoices on 22 September went out at the old rate. Businesses whose systems used date-effective rate tables switched on the morning of the change.

Item	Before 22 September 2025	From 22 September 2025
Main slabs	5%, 12%, 18%, 28%	5% and 18%
Special rate	Compensation cess on select goods	40% on select luxury and demerit goods
Billing impact	Four slab rate masters	Rate remapping for most HSN codes, stock price relabelling

Tobacco products followed a separate timeline. Check the CBIC rate notifications for your specific HSN codes rather than relying on slab summaries.

How GST Council decisions reach your billing software

A Council decision reaches your billing software through CBIC notifications that set an effective date, followed by portal and e-invoice schema changes from GSTN. Your software has to change rates, rules or formats on that date, not on the meeting date.

1. Council meeting and press release: decisions announced, often with an indicative date.
2. CBIC notifications: legal effect, exact HSN codes, rates and conditions.
3. GSTN advisories: changes to returns, IMS, e-invoice or e-way bill formats.
4. Your software update: rate tables, ITC rules, report formats, schema versions.
5. Your team: price lists, MRP labels, customer communication.

What to prepare in your GST billing software now

Prepare four things now: date-effective tax rates by HSN, clean ITC classification of purchases, a reconciliation loop with IMS and GSTR-2B, and refund tracking for accumulated credit. These cover most outcomes of the October meeting.

Date-effective rate masters

Store tax rates against HSN codes with "valid from" and "valid to" dates instead of a single rate on each item. When a notification arrives, you add a new row dated for the effective day. Invoices before and after that date are both correct, and credit notes against old invoices use the old rate.

ITC classification on purchases

Every purchase line should carry an ITC status: eligible, blocked, or reversed with a reason. If the Council eases a restriction, you change a rule, not a thousand historical entries.

IMS and GSTR-2B reconciliation

Since GSTR-3B liability is now locked to GSTR-1 data and ITC flows from the Invoice Management System, your purchase register must match supplier uploads. Our GST IMS guide for SMEs explains accept, reject and pending.

Refund and inverted duty tracking

Exporters and businesses with an inverted duty structure should track accumulated credit by month, so a refund application can be prepared quickly if the process changes.

What different outcomes would mean for your business

Each likely outcome lands in a different part of your system: an ITC change touches purchase entries, a rate change touches item masters and labels, a refund change touches credit ledgers, and a return change touches reports. Map the outcomes now so the work is planned.

The table below is a planning aid, not a prediction. It lists what your team would need to do if the Council decides in each area, and how long that work usually takes when the software is set up well.

If the Council decides on	What changes in your system	Typical effort with good software
Easing ITC restrictions	ITC eligibility rules on purchase lines, GSTR-3B Table 4 report	A few hours of configuration and testing
Rate changes on specific HSN codes	New rows in the rate table, price lists, shelf labels	One day including label printing
Inverted duty refund changes	Credit ledger by HSN, refund working report	A small report change
Return or IMS procedure changes	Import formats, reconciliation screens	Depends on GSTN advisory timing
E-invoice or e-way bill schema changes	JSON payload and validation	One to two weeks including sandbox testing

For a manufacturer in Rajkot buying castings and selling finished pumps, an ITC change and an inverted duty change could both apply. For a retailer selling consumer goods, a rate change on a few HSN codes matters most. Read the notifications through the lens of your own HSN list, not the headlines.

One more practical point: keep a short change log in your billing system that records which notification triggered each rate or rule change and the date it took effect. When your CA or an officer asks why an invoice was taxed a certain way, you can answer in a minute.

What we have seen after past GST changes in Gujarat

When rates changed in September 2025, our billing and accounting clients in Rajkot and Saurashtra fell into two groups: those with date-effective rate tables, who switched in minutes, and those who edited items by hand over several days.

• A hardware and sanitaryware trader near Morbi had around 6,000 items with rates stored per item. The fix was a one-time migration to an HSN rate table, after which the next rate change took one entry.
• A textile trader in Surat had credit building up from inverted duty. A monthly credit ledger by HSN gave his CA the data for refunds without rebuilding twelve months of purchases.
• A two-outlet electronics retailer in Rajkot printed shelf labels from the POS. Linking label printing to the rate change date avoided a weekend of manual relabelling.

How to decide if your current software is ready

Your billing software is ready for Council decisions if it stores rates by HSN with effective dates, classifies ITC per purchase line, reconciles with IMS, and its vendor or developer can ship schema changes within days. If any of those is missing, fix it before the next notification.

Check	Ready	Not ready
Tax rates	HSN table with valid-from dates	Fixed rate on each item
ITC	Status per purchase line	Decided at return time in a spreadsheet
Reconciliation	IMS and GSTR-2B import and match	Manual comparison
E-invoice	Schema version tracked, quick updates	Unknown or vendor-dependent with long delays

Our GST billing software requirements and e-invoicing software requirements posts list the full feature set.

Related reading and next step

See our accounting and GST billing software, the GST IMS guide, GST billing software requirements and POS billing software. We will update this page once the Council's decisions are notified. For a fixed quote to move your billing to date-effective rates and ITC rules, contact us through the contact page or WhatsApp +91 7265004040.