The commission was to submit its Report on the basis of its Terms of Reference (ToR) by 30 October 2019 covering a period of five years commencing from 1 April 2020.

[21] In July 2019, The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the extension of the term of Fifteenth Finance Commission up to 30 November 2019 to enable the commission to examine various comparable estimates for financial projections in view of reforms and the new realities to finalise its recommendations for the period 2020–2025, after taking into consideration, its constitution in the backdrop of various major fiscal/budgetary reforms introduced by the Union Government in the past four years like closure of the Planning Commission and its replacement by NITl Aayog, removal of distinction between Non-Plan and Plan expenditure, advancing the budget calendar by one month and passing of the full budget before commencement of the new financial year i.e. on 1 February, introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) from July 2017 and New FRBM architecture with debt and fiscal deficit path, and also the task of determining the expenditure and receipts of the Union and State governments based on which the Commission shall make its recommendations is time-consuming, as checks for data consistency across time and data sets become challenging.

[25] On 9 November 2020, the Fifteenth Finance Commission (XVFC) led by Chairman Sh N K Singh, submitted its report for the period 2021–22 to 2025–26 to the Hon'ble President of India.

[2][3] The main tasks of the commission were to "strengthen cooperative federalism, improve the quality of public spending and help protect fiscal stability".

[49][50] The president of Nationalist Congress Party, Sharad Pawar, suggested the commission to create a financial buffer against oil prices.

[52][53] West Bengal government further suggested an alternative devolution formula based on factors like social backwardness, locational complexities and continuation of revenue deficits to the commission.

[61] The commission further met with the representatives of various federal government agencies, including the vice-chairman and chief executive officer of its quasi-autonomous policy think-tank, the NITI Aayog, Rajiv Kumar and Amitabh Kant respectively.

[68][69][70] The council consisted of president of Forum for Strategic Initiatives and former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India, Arvind Virmani; Oxus Research and Investments chairman and a part-time member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, Surjit Bhattal; a former deputy director in the IMF, Sanjeev Gupta; a professor at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Pinaki Chakraborty; JP Morgan chief India economist, Sajjid Chinoy; and a managing director and India economist and strategist at Credit Suisse, Neelkanth Mishra.

[71][72] Further, the commission also constituted a high-level group to inter alia advise it on "ways and means to" make effective use of the "existing financial resources and to" encourage "the state governments' effort on" fulfilling "well-defined health parameters in India".

[87][88][89][90] In response, Subhash Chandra Garg, Union Economic Affairs Secretary, said that the terms of reference were balanced and were "not one way or the other", adding that according to the second provision of the ToR, states with a good total fertility rate—especially, the ones which had reached the replacement rate (2.1 children per woman)—would be incentivised.

[91][92][93] Garg's views were reiterated by the nation's finance minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rajya Sabha leader, Arun Jaitley, who—in a Facebook post—said that the row over the commission's terms of reference was "needless" and could not have been "further from the truth".

[98][99] Five state and two union territory finance ministers met in Andhra Pradesh's capital, Amaravati, and drafted a memorandum to the president, Ram Nath Kovind, seeking changes in the commission's terms of reference.