President Pranab Mukherjee has signed the government’s flagship Goods and Services Tax Bill, which will do away with the indirect taxes and usher in one tax for the entire country.
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The bill was unanimously passed in the upper house on August 3.
When the House convened yet again, State Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu backed the GST Bill and said that it would be beneficial to both the Centre and States.
Mukherjee has given approval to the bill, official sources said.
The GST 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.
With the President’s assent the constitutional amendment act will be notified. Other states which had earlier approved the bill were Maharashtra, Haryana, Bihar, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, and Nagaland. “Instead of 30 days kept for this (states’ ratification), it is achieved in 23 days”, he had said in a tweet. Union Finance Minister will head the Council, which will comprise state Finance Ministers.
The CGST and IGST will be drafted on the basis of the model GST law.
The bill had to be ratified by a majority of states before it could become law.
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The Cabinet had assigned the task of establishing the iconic towers to the Andhra Pradesh Technology Services Limited (APTSL), which would henceforth promote information technology in the state.
