Seven states yet to pass GST laws even as roll out deadline nears

The govt plans to roll out the GST, which will subsume 16 different taxes, from July 1

With less than a month left for GST rollout, seven states, including West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Jammu & Kashmir, are yet to pass their legislations required for implementing the new indirect tax regime.

So far, 24 states and Union Territories, including Delhi, Odisha and Puducherry, have passed the State Goods and Services Tax (SGST) Act in their respective legislative assemblies.

However, seven states — Meghalaya, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Jammu & Kashmir and West Bengal — are yet to pass the SGST law. Baring Jammu & Kashmir where BJP is an alliance partner of PDP, all are non-BJP ruled states.

The government plans to roll out the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which will subsume 16 different taxes, from July 1.

West Bengal wants the Centre to delay rollout of the GST by a month and the issue was raised by state Finance Minister Amit Mitra at the meeting of the GST Council last week.

Mitra said that implementation of the GST from July 1 will have "serious problems" as the IT infrastructure required to manage GST's returns and invoice uploading are not in place.

"So far, GSTN has been able to do the test drive on 200-300 companies in each state. Forms and rules have been changed in May. The (Union) finance minister has to decide whether it should go ahead with the biggest fiscal reform when the IT preparedness is not 100%," Mitra had said.

As per the GST Constitutional Amendment, all states have to pass SGST bills by September 15, 2017, failing which they will lose their taxation powers.