He said GST Council will decide on the rate and states know that less tax burden should be put on common man. Centre has only one-third vote in the GST Council and states have two-third. Complaining that the NDA government had always viewed the Lok Sabha as a “junior partner” and did not take the House seriously, Moily said when the Lower House passed the GST bill in May a year ago, he had demanded that Joint Select Committee of both Houses of Parliament be set up.
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“The approval of the Constitutional Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha today marks crossing of another milestone in the journey towards introduction of a Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime in the country”. We have reached here after churnings in the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha, 29 States, their representatives and 90 parties.
He said that the new tax law will be an important step towards getting the country rid of “tax terrorism” and also make “consumers the king”.
“For initial 1-2 years, a lot of accounting and training companies will also be able to create job opportunities specialising in implementation of GST”, executive search firm GlobalHunt MD Sunil Goel said, adding that sectors like manufacturing, FMCG, e-commerce, telecom, automotive and media will be major ones to benefit and will generate more jobs.
“Passage of GST is a victory for not just the ruling political party, but for the entire nation”.
“It is due to the victory of all political parties and victory of Indian democracy”, Modi said.
The prime minister said the consensus over GST is proving that Rashtraneeti is above Rajneeti (national issues are above politics) in India.
Therefore, eating out, travel, telephone bills, banking and insurance services, hiring cabs, broadband, movies, branded jewellery and popular sporting events such as IPL will become expensive. For the critics of GST, the PM reminded the House that most “things that can impact consumer inflation have been kept out of the ambit of GST”.
Arya reckons that with the rollout of GST, this key impediment to the development of the warehousing industry will be resolved. Supporting the Bill, Tathagata Satpathy (BJD) said the legislation will attack and erode the very independence of States.
The Goods and Services Tax Bill was taken up for discussion in the Lok sabha on Monday.
“Again no state will want that tax rate be lowered so much that they are unable to pay salary”.
On the basis of Mr Subramanian panel report, the Congress had been demanding a cap in the GST rate at 18 per cent in the bill. “Gradually, we will bring it further (GST rate) down because GST will bring efficiency and do away with tax-on-tax”, he said.
The Trinamool member also demanded that the GST Council be formed at the earliest.
He said there was a crucial need for developing confidence among states as many of them had apprehensions about the Centre compensating them for loss of revenue.
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Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge took a dig at Modi, saying he had opposed the bill as Gujarat Chief Minister. Now it will be forwarded to Lok Sabha and will be on table on Monday, 8th of August.
