Agriculturist - GST Ready Reckoner - GST

As per Section 2(7) of CGST Act, 2017 Agriculturist means an individual or a Hindu Undivided Family who undertakes cultivation of land (a) by own labour, or (b) by the labour of family, or (c) by servants on wages payable in cash or kind or by hired labour under personal supervision or the personal supervision of any member of the family; As per Minutes of the 10th GST Council Meeting held on 18 February 2017 it was decided that Officers of the Law Committee would examine whether or not definition of 'agriculture' and 'agriculturist' was needed in the GST Law. He informed that while working on the revised formulation, the Law Committee took note of the suggestions made in the 7th Meeting of the Council that the definition of 'agriculture' in GST Law should follow the same approach as in the Income Tax Act, which did not define the word 'agriculture' and only defined the phrase agricultural income as the Income Tax Act was concerned only with agricultural income and not with agriculture in general. He explained that the salient feature of the definition under the Income Tax Act was that it was agricultural land based and was linked to cultivation and related activities. He observed that under the GST law, the main purpose was to keep the 'agriculturist' out of the registration liability and therefore, following the approach of the Income Tax Act, the focus should be on defining 'agriculturist' and not 'agriculture'.