Govt working to rollout GST on April 1: Jaitley

The Centre is working on a target date of 1st April, 2017 for the roll out of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the country, said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday at the fourth meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee in New Delhi.

The subject of today's Meeting was the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

He said that till 16th September, 2017, that is one year after the provisions of the Constitution (101st Amendment) Act, 2016 being brought into force, the Constitution empowers the Central Government to levy excise duty on manufacturing; and service tax on the supply of services. The Finance Minister said that similarly the Constitution Amendment Act empowers the State Governments to levy sales tax or Value Added Tax (VAT) on the sale of goods till that time i.e. 16th September, 2016.

He said the first meeting of the GST Council was held in a very 'cordial and constructive' environment while adding that in the next meet the Council will take decisions on important issues like tax rates, exemption list and threshold limits.

"There is one item on GST council which wasn't taken up, calculation of annual increase of revenue, which is a formulation which is required for determining the compensation payble to any state losing out on revenue, which will be taken up in the next meeting of the council which will be held for three consecutive days on 18th, 19th and 20th of October ," adding "GST rate will be the big item that will be discussed in the next meeting" said Jaitley.

Members of Consultative Committee sought various clarifications with regard to GST Law and gave suggestions for its better implementation.

Some of the major suggestions include need for absolute clarity and transparency with regard to where taxes will be collected, assessed and where the appeal will be filed in case of GST regime.

Some of the members suggested there is a need for launching a large scale Awareness Campaign especially for the small traders as most of them are still unaware about the complex procedures and processes under GST regime including for registration and filing of returns.

The members also suggested that availability of IT network in all parts of the country, especially in small towns and rural areas, must be ensured as GST system will work only online.

The members hoped that this law will bring relief to the common man by exempting certain essential items from GST and moderate rate of taxation on other items which in turn will bring down the prices of common man consumption items as well as cost of living at large.