Steps being taken for early roll-out of GST: FinMin

The Finance Ministry today said work is in progress to rollout the new indirect tax regime GST as soon as possible, which will help remove the cascading effect of taxation and boost economic growth.

"We have taken all the steps to ensure that we get there (rollout GST) as soon as we can. It is a team effort of the Centre and the states. They have to work together. Indeed we have been doing that," Revenue Secretary Sumit Bose said at the Central Excise Day celebration here.

The GST Constitution (Amendment) Bill, 2011 has already been introduced in Parliament and is currently under examination by the Standing Committee on Finance.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST), which will subsume most of the indirect taxes in the country.

Parthasarathi Shome, Advisor to the Finance Minister, also said the work was in progress towards implementation of the ambitious indirect tax regime.

"Background work is going on in high speed," said, adding, the new regime would help in removing the cascading impact of taxes in the country.

He said GST would enable voluntary tax compliance while creating document trail for all commercial transactions in order to identify and take action on tax evaders.

"GST will facilitate investment decisions to be based on economic concerns independent of tax considerations by eliminating cascading effects," Shome said.

As per experts, implementation of GST would increase the country's growth potential by about 1-2 percent.

In a recent meeting, the Centre assured the States that they would be adequately compensated for their losses on account of phasing out of Central Sales Tax (CST).

Finance Minister P Chidambaram had earlier told state finance ministers that he would include a broad outline of the Constitution Amendment Bill on GST in his Budget speech if there was a consensus.