Goods & Services Bill (GST Bill) was tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.
The Goods & Services Tax Bill was tabled in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday. The GST Bill, which is touted as the biggest tax reform in the country since Independence, proposes to subsume all indirect taxes on goods and services and levy a single rate.
While speaking in the Rajya Sabha at the beginning of what will be a five-hour debate on the GST bill, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley acknowledged that the Bill was first introduced by the UPA government. He said, several discussions were held to get a consensus amongst all the states to ensure none of them felt shortchanged. There was a concern among certain states, he said, that since GST was a consumption-based destination tax, it will stand to benefit certain states more than the others.
Further, Jaitley said, "GST will be Indian federalism in the best possible way".
Here are some of the benefits of the GST Bill listed by Jaitley:
1) Merits of the system itself are that it would convert India into one uniform economic market
2) Ease of doing business
3) Best economic management of the country
4) It will empower states
5) It will improve the revenue of states and the Centre
6) It will ensure no tax on tax; there will be no cascading effect of taxes
7) It will give a boost to the economy required at this critical stage
8) With a uniform tax rate,bring about seamless transfer of goods and services across country, enable us to check evasion
Former finance minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said that the Congress was never opposed to the idea of the Goods and Services Tax (GST), adding the grand old party did not support it as there were too many flaws in the earlier bill. Chidambaram said the former UPA regime tried to pass the GST Bill, between 2011-14, with the opposition support but failed.
"In the last 18 months, the government tried passing GST without support but failed. The 2014 bill was opposed, the idea wasn't because we felt it was possible to have a more perfect bill," said Chidambaram. "There is no such thing as a perfect bill. But when we found there were too many flaws in it, we decided that we cannot support the bill," he added.
Chidambaram, who was speaking after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley introduced the GST Bill in the Rajya Sabha, welcomed the government's decision of dropping the provision of 1% inter-state transaction tax in the bill. The Congress leader also said he hopes the Finance Minister will pass the GST Bill not on strength of numbers but in strength of his arguments. "I'm glad the Finance Minister acknowledged that it was the UPA government that first officially announced the intention to bring GST," he added.
The Finance Minister earlier said the GST Bill is one of the most important tax reforms in India's history, adding a reform like this legislation cannot be passed on partisan consensus. It was also added that the two-year-old deadlock was broken only after the government offered concessions to the opposition Congress party. Chidambaram also blamed the government for the deadlock, he said, "It could have been resolved in five minutes, but the government was rather stubborn."
With agency inputs
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