Bengal to write to Centre seeking deferment of GST rollout

The West Bengal government will write to the Centre seeking postponement of the July 1 start to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, as "small and medium traders are not yet prepared for the new tax system", a state minister said here on Tuesday.

"The country's small and medium traders are still not ready for the GST rollout," Finance Minister Amit Mitra, who is also Chairman of the Empowered Committee on GST, told mediapersons.

He said the country would head to a disastrous situation if the date was not pushed back.

"We can foresee that we are heading towards a disastrous situation. So we have decided to write to the Centre again for reconsideration of the GST rollout date. We want the date to be deferred till the time the country is prepared for it," he said.

Mitra, in this context, cited reports that small traders in Gujarat's Surat were opposing GST, and said: "They have said they have no idea about how the new tax regime will work."

"Not only in West Bengal, reports have been coming from Surat that around 5,000 small and medium traders fear that they may have to shut the shop if the new regime comes into force immediately," he said.

Mitra said in the GST Council, it was repeatedly pointed out that the new regime should have a systematic start.

"In countries like Germany and Japan, they had given 12 to 18 months' time prior to introducing such tax system," he said.

--IANS

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