WB Finance Minister calls for 3-day session of state FMs on GST overhaul

West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra has called for a three-day session of all state finance ministers to overhaul the framework of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

In a statement the All India Trinamool Congress said, "Bangla Finance Minister Amit Mitra has called for a three-day session of all finance ministers to overhaul the framework of the Goods and Services Tax, the design of which is faulty and is one of the reasons for the economic slowdown in the country today."

"In an interview, Mitra, who is also chairman of the committee of empowered finance ministers, said there were four points behind why the GST had failed since the three years that it has been implemented. One, the entire design was faulty: there were no pilots done, no data tests, no trials. And this when, for the first time in the history of the world, the largest tax reforms were taking place," the statement on the TMC website read.

"The laws and rules were faulty; there were frequent change in rules, and everybody lost, both the business and IT sectors. The second point is the complete inability to cope with what was happening. Number three point is there were frequent changes in the rate structure per item. The IT people were at a loss, as they too have to make frequent computer adjustments. And fourth is that the Centre-State coordination was completely lacking," it read.

The statement further read, "In August 2019, a letter was written to FM Nirmala Sitaraman about the increasing number of fraudulent transactions in GST. So the time has come to overhaul, in collaboration with each of the state finance ministers in a federalist polity, where we put our heads together to restructure the GST policy for the sake of the small and medium enterprises and the businesses of the country.