Moneycontrol Bureau
The Finance Minister Arun Jaitley-led GST Council met on Saturday and finalised the Draft Compensation Bill, in a bid to speed up the rollout of Goods and Services Tax by July 1, 2017.The 10th meeting of the GST Council also cleared the final drafting of the anti-profiteering clause to ensure benefit of lower taxes gets shared with consumers. Crucial draft laws pertaining largely to Central GST (CGST), Integrated GST (IGST) and State GST (SGST) are yet to be finalised. The GST Council will now meet next on March 4 and 5 to give final touches to the CGST, IGST and SGST laws.
“Composition of Appeal tribunal in Centre and States and eligibility of members, delegation of powers, exemptions during the transition phase, services and Value Added Tax in works contracts where it will be taxed, composition limit, definition of agriculture - on all these issues the legal committee had questions on these provisions,” Jaitley said after the meeting, adding that these laws would be approved after incorporating these clarifications."After the meeting on March 4 and 5, we hope to table the legislative laws in Parliament in the second half of the Budget session which begins on March 9," he said. "The SGST law will go to the state assemblies for approval."He added that legally vetted drafts for all important bills would be presented to the council next month, while states are expected to get the final draft of CGST and SGST on March 1.Jaitley said that after the next meeting, only one more major sitting of the GST Council would be required for approval of fitting commodities into specific slabs.The GST Law Committee said that 57 issues raised in the past had been resolved at Saturday's meeting.A Finance Ministry official said the Council is of the opinion that a new GST law for Union Territories will have to be crafted that will be a replica of the SGST.In the run-up to the GST Council’s tenth meeting in Udaipur, the Law Ministry had sent the approved language and draft of the model GST Law outlining the new national sales tax meant to be levied on products and services. A sub-committee of the GST Council’s made up of central and state officials had discussed the draft of Friday.
The government plans to introduce the model GST law in Parliament in the second half of the Budget Session beginning next month. The government is keen to roll out the new regime from July 1 but for that, it will have to get two laws - the Central GST (CGST) Act and Integrated GST (IGST) Act — approved by Parliament and each of the state legislatives have to pass the State GST (SGST) Act. The model GST law provides a common draft of CGST Act, SGST Act. Besides, there is an IGST law and Compensation law.
The anti-profiteering clause allows for the constitution of an authority that examines whether input tax credits availed by any registered taxable person, or the reduction in the price on account of any reduction in the tax rate, actually result in a commensurate reduction in the price of the said goods and/or services supplied by the person.
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