Punjab finance minister Manpreet Badal advises Arun Jaitley to keep GST (Goods and Services Tax) above politics.“Mr Jaitley should keep national interest in mind and not 2019,” said Badal
He also pointed out that Congress was in favour of bringing Petroleum and Electricity into the ambit of the GST. While the Congress wanted this point to be discussed in the GST Council, and was assured that it would be placed in the agenda at some point, “it does not seem to be a priority for the BJP,” he said.
Badal was responding to FM Jaitley’s blog accusing the Congress of opposing rationalization of taxes and the GST.
Registration for the Service Tax has been poor and only 50,000 and odd people had registered themselves so far, he claimed. Congress had suggested that most professionals and self-employed people earning less than Rs 50 lakhs be brought into the 5% tax bracket. At the same time the Congress has also suggested that 80% of the people being taxed at present are contributing negligible amount to the revenue and should be kept out.
The failure of the GST is evident because indirect taxes grew at only 4.3% during the first half of the 2017-18 fiscal year as against the target of 22.2%. Far from the projected incremental buoyancy of 2% in GDP, the GDP growth rate has actually declined.
The Government at the last minute on December 22 wanted the GST Council to approve Real Estate to be taxed at 5%, he revealed. But while the Real Estate sector generates high employment, it also generates a lot of black money, Badal said, which is why the Congress wanted the Government to study the revenue implications of the proposal. Since the proposal was circulated at the last minute, it was decided to take it up in the next meeting of the Council in January.
What the BJP Government is,however, doing is ‘patch work’, he said, and alleged that rationalization of taxes was being done by the Government which is in a panic mode before the general election.
- The GST collection crossed the Rs.1 Lakh Crore per month mark only two times (April and October 2018) in the 18-month history of the GST regime.
- That the GST Council has met 31 times in 18 months, which indicates how flawed the implementation has been.
- As many as 1000 changes have been made in the rules during this period, making confusion worse confounded.
- No Vice Chairman of the GST Council has so far been appointed by the Government despite Arun Jaitley telling Manpreet Badal that as a democrat he wanted the post to go to the Congress.
- Contrary to rules, the Government circulated agenda papers in instalments before the 31st meeting of the GST Council held on December 22.
- While rules say that the agenda be circulated at least three days in advance, the papers were circulated first late on the 21st evening and the next lot of papers were circulated to the members on 22nd as they walked into the meeting.
The failure of the GST is evident because indirect taxes grew at only 4.3% during the first half of the 2017-18 fiscal year as against the target of 22.2%. Far from the projected incremental buoyancy of 2% in GDP, the GDP growth rate has actually declined.
Manpreet Badal and Congress spokesman Prof Vallabh decried Arun Jaitley’s ‘falsehood’ that Congress was opposed to rationalization of taxes under the GST. Reminding the Finance Minister that both BJP and the then Gujarat Chief Minister were opposed to GST, they pointed out that Congress President Rahul Gandhi had consistently described the GST as “Gabbar Singh Tax” and demanded simplification and rationalization of the GST.
source: NH
