Goods and Services Tax: Get set, delayed

As the April 1 roll-out of GST looks set to be missed, the GST Council will meet again on Jan 3-4

As the April 1 roll-out of GST (goods and services tax) looks set to be missed, the GST Council will meet again on January 3-4 to arrive at a consensus on contentious issues, including dual administrative control, inter-state supply and definition of states. July 1, 2017 seems to be the next possible date for a roll-out

Eighth round of GST Council meeting on:

Tuesday and Wednesday

In the last meeting, the GST Council agreed to:

1. Draft model of the GST Bill, except for provisions relating to the division of administrative turf between Centre, states

2. Compensation Bill — base year to be 2015-16; compensation to be paid every 2 months for the first 5 years of roll-out

Issues to be taken up on January 3- 4 meeting:

Division of administrative turf between Centre and states over assessees

1. States want sole control over assessees of up to Rs 1.5 crore of annual turnover and sharing of turf with Centre above that

IGST Bill

1. Issue of whether states can control assessees with inter-state supply, which comes under IGST

2. Constitution amendment Bill empowers the Centre to collect IGST and distributes shares of states

3. Definition of states; the Centre wants to tax sale of goods up to 12 nautical miles of Indian coast

4. Parallelly, the panel of officers is working on segment-wise GST rates