The Finance Minister Arun
Jaitley-led GST Council met on Saturday and finalised the Draft Compensation
Bill, in a bid to speed up the rollout of Goods and Services Tax by July 1,
2017.
Crucial draft laws pertaining
largely to Central GST (CGST), Integrated GST (IGST) and State GST (SGST) were
approved by the panel. The Council also cleared the final drafting of the
anti-profiteering clause to ensure benefit of lower taxes gets shared with
consumers.
The GST Council will now meet next on March 4
and 5 to give final touches to the CGST, IGST and SGST laws. Speaking to
reporters after the meeting, Jaitley said all the outstanding issues
surrounding these laws would most likely be resolved at the next meeting of the
Council.
"After the meeting on March 4
and 5, we hope to table the legislative laws in Parliament in the second half
of the Budget session which begins on March 9," he said. "The SGST
law will go to the state assemblies for approval."
He said that after the next meeting,
only one more major sitting of the GST Council would be required to fit
commodities into specific slabs.
The GST Law Committee said that 57
issues raised in the past had been resolved at Saturday's meeting.
A Finance Ministry official said
that a new GST law for Union Territories will have to be crafted that will be a
replica of the SGST.
In the run-up to the GST Council’s
tenth meeting in Udaipur, the Law Ministry had sent the approved language and
draft of the model GST Law outlining the new national sales tax meant to be
levied on products and services. A sub-committee of the GST Council’s made up
of central and state officials had discussed the draft of Friday.
The government plans to introduce
the model GST law in Parliament in the second half of the Budget Session
beginning next month. The government is keen to roll out the new regime from
July 1 but for that, it will have to get two laws - the Central GST (CGST) Act
and Integrated GST (IGST) Act — approved by Parliament and each of the state
legislatives have to pass the State GST (SGST) Act. The model GST law provides
a common draft of CGST Act, SGST Act. Besides, there is an IGST law and
Compensation law.
The anti-profiteering clause allows
for the constitution of an authority that examines whether input tax credits
availed by any registered taxable person, or the reduction in the price on
account of any reduction in the tax rate, actually result in a commensurate
reduction in the price of the said goods and/or services supplied by the
person.
