FM to be handed over GST draft on Nov 10

Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers, which have been working on this over two years, will meet the Finance Minister tomorrow and this draft white paper will be made public late tomorrow afternoon to invite comments and suggestions. Broadly, what I understand from our sources is that, this draft white paper proposes the broad contours of this combined indirect tax.

It will essentially deal with the structure of the dual GST as has been already spoken about - GST at the central level and GST at state level - threshold levels for taxation and other parameters are expected. Also, along with this, will be the taxation principles for interstate supplies.

But what is not likely to come out clearly in this draft tomorrow is detailed product listing. The specific means of products and how they will be dealt with - for instance concession items, aviation fuel and stuff like that. That is possibly going to be sort of fine tuned at a later stage.

According to tax experts the draft paper - the broad philosophy and approach of this will be in-line with what has been talked about in the past. So there will not be any major surprises but clearly this is a beginning towards the eventual introduction of GST. Remember, the Finance Minister has already indicated a couple of weeks back that there is likely to be a delay in the introduction from the original date of April 1. We are looking at least two quarter delay. But as of now, GST is probably going to hit sometime in mid next financial year.