AMN
Government will seek Presidential assent for the landmark Constitution amendment bill for GST as 16 states have ratified the legislation. With Odisha approving the Bill at a special assembly session today, 50% of the states have ratified the GST bill.
In a tweet, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the requisite number of states have ratified the GST Constitution Amendment Bill and now it can go for Presidential assent. Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said the government is ahead of schedule for implementation of GST. He said, instead of 30 days kept for states’ ratification, it is achieved in 23 days.
The government plans to roll out the new indirect tax regime from April next year. The biggest tax will create uniform market for seamless movement of goods and services with one tax rate. Since Parliament passed the Constitution Amendment bill last month, 16 states have ratified the bill. They include Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Nagaland. Maharashtra and Odisha.
After the Presidential assent, the government will notify the GST Council. The council will decide on the tax rate, cess and surcharges which are to be subsumed and also decide on the goods and services which would be exempted from the purview of the new indirect tax regime.
States and the Centre are working overtime and talking to stakeholders to draft the Central GST, State GST and Integrated GST laws, which are to be passed in the Winter Session of Parliament. The CGST and IGST will be drafted on the basis of the model GST law. The states will draft their respective State GST (SGST) laws. The IGST law would deal with inter-state movement of goods and services.