The General Services Tax (GST) Bill muddle has taken a major share of business hours of Parliament without any results. The house never was able to reach a consensus on the issue with Congress remaining in a combative mood slamming the Modi-government for its plan to impose 2 per cent cess for the ‘Skill India’ mission, thereby taking the total to 5 per cent for different purposes including Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Implementation of GST will help resolve various issues concerning taxation and logistics with regard to e-commerce business, which has been recording rapid growth in the country. Congress wants the government to cap the GST rate at less than 20 per cent, scrap a proposed state levy and create an independent mechanism to resolve disputes on revenue sharing between states. The political slugfest between the two sides has ensured that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s self-imposed deadline of 1st April for the GST’s launch has been missed and hopes the Constitutional Amendment Bill passed in February’s budget session would allow it to implement by October. There is still a substantive legislative process that has to be completed. The introduction of Goods and Services Tax is a matter of serious and far-reaching reform initiative. First mooted by NDA Government and later by the UPA Government the Bill has been pending for several years. The Bill has not only wasted the valuable time of the Parliament but has enlarged the politics of acrimony and bitterness and passage of GST Bill could well signal this new beginning. GST is to subsume all indirect taxes like excise duty, sales tax and service tax. In the new regime, there will be one Central GST or C-GST and State GST or S-GST. Currently, states levy sales tax or VAT on goods sold within their state and they get a Central Sales Tax (CST) on sales made outside their territories. The journey for the Bill to become a reality is still a long one because once Parliament passes it, states have to ratify the same to make it applicable which will take its own time.
