State GST

Presenting the Budget 2011-12 in the Parliament today, the Finance Minister Shri Pranab Mukherjee stressed that introduction of Direct Taxes Code (DTC) and Goods & Services Tax (GST) will result in moderation of rates, simplification of laws and better compliance. He said DTC will be finalized for enactment during next financial year. The DTC Bill that was introduced in the Parliament in August 2010 is before the Standing Committee. Full Article

The Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, has told the State Finance Ministers that they are free to fix their own State GST rates, but hopes that they would not exercise this freedom after a consensus is reached in the GST Council. He, thus, has conceded a major demand of the States that the Union Finance Minister should not have the last word on the State GST rates. Full Article

To begin with, next year, he suggested, the Centre will adopt a three-rate formula. While Mukherjee proposed that the rate of taxation for services be fixed at 8 per cent, a dual-rate regime for goods was recommended at the meeting of the empowered committee of state finance ministers. The Centre plans to keep a lower rate of 6 per cent for certain goods and maintain a standard rate of 10 per cent in the first year. Full Article

The new composition provides a simpler method of calculating tax liability. In a bid to reduce the cost of administering small traders in the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, the finance ministry plans to collect taxes from businesses below a turnover of Rs 1 crore at a defined floor rate, which will be much lower than the GST rate. Full Article

First paper on Goods and Service tax (‘GST’) was introduced on 10 November 2009 since then there is a constant wait among professionals and industrialists for Goods and Service tax legislature. Pending the clearance of issues involved in GST regime there was a report of Task force on 15 December, 2009. This report deals with several issues in detail and lays down the path of GST in India. We here under try to summarize the report of 170 pages only in few pages. Full Article

In a landmark decision, the UPA government has resolved to amend the Constitution to enable states to have the same powers as the Centre in administering the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST). Full Article

Though the Centre and states officially exuded confidence in meeting the revised deadline to roll out GST from the next fiscal, an agreement over the structure for the proposed indirect tax system does not seem to be so easy. While the states have proposed two rates for goods under GST on the grounds that necessary items should attract lower rate, the Centre has suggested one rate, saying a two-rate structure would pose problems. Full Article

GST is a tax on goods and services with comprehensive and continuous chain of set-off benefits from the producer’s / service provider’s point up to the retailer’s level i.e. up to the last level in the chain. It is essentially a tax only on value addition at each stage. The whole structure is devised in such a way that only the final consumer should bear the tax. Full Article