Sources said Naidu had told them that since their state legislatures were in the midst of their monsoon sessions, these could be extended by a couple of days or the Houses reconvened after a short break to pass the bill.
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“The GST will also be the best example of cooperative federalism”.
In a landmark move, the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday passed the Goods and Services Tax Constitutional Amendment Bill which aims to bring in a uniform tax in the country.
The bill had easily passed India’s lower house, but had been stuck in the upper house where Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party does not have a majority. “Green Tax on minerals and other polluting goods sold in course of interstate trade and commerce to compensate the adverse effect of pollution” said the Finance Minister. No decision has so far been taken in this regard. The government now needs to train 60,000 state and federal officials for the rollout, as well as those in the business community.
“Replacing certain clauses which were approved in the Lok Sabha unilaterally is not proper”, he said.
Assocham president Sunil Kanoria termed it as a milestone in India’s economic reforms after the 1991 reforms.
An IT network is also to be erected for which a non-profit, non-government company has been set up called Goods and Services Tax Network that will formulate the front-end and back-end modules – the deadline is 2016-end.
“However, as some of the key steps are slated from now onwards till March 2017, the implementation date of 1st April 2017 appears hard to achieve”, he said.
Isaac said the state expressed its criticism stating some clauses ran contrary to the consensus arrived at the Empowered Committee.
He said that while the Centre would take steps for enactment of CGST and IGST Act, the states would enact SGST Act.
Balbir said that while the existing central taxes include Excise Duty, Service Tax and additional customs duties, the state taxes comprise of Entertainment Tax, Luxury Tax, Lottery Tax, Electricity Duty, Sales Tax, Octroi, Value Added Tax (VAT).
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Instead of goods being taxed multiple times at different rates, under the new GST regime goods would be taxed at point of consumption.
