Govt to celebrate 2nd anniversary of GST on July 1

The Government will organise an event on July 1, to celebrate the second anniversary of Goods and Services Tax (GST) roll out, which will be addressed by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her deputy Anurag Thakur.

The event, to be held in Ambedkar Bhawan, here, will be attended by senior officers of the central and state tax authorities. There will be a presentation on the two years of GST and the road ahead for the indirect tax regime, according to an official notification.

Interestingly, the pilot of new return filing, which will replace the current system of GSTR-3B (summary returns) and GSTR-1 (supplies return), would also be launched on July 1, 2019.

GST has helped curbing evasion, including by way of mandatory generation of e-way bill for transporting goods over Rs 50,000, it said.

GST, which subsumed 17 local levies, was rolled out on the intervening night of June 30 and July 1, 2017, in a ceremony held in the central hall of the parliament.

GST transformed India into 'One Nation, One Tax' and binds the country into an economic union, it added.

Over the last two years, GST has been simplified with tax rates being lowered for nearly 500 products and return filing system streamlined.