States demand taxation rights for high sea sales at the GST council meeting

04 Jan 2017 Evaluate

On the first day of its eighth meeting of Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council, the States have demanded taxation rights for high sea sales and also increasing the number of items on which cess is to be levied to compensate for revenue loss. The revenue loss is estimated at Rs 90,000 crore post demonetisation as most states have seen revenue decline of up to 40 per cent, which is much above the initial estimate of Rs 55,000 crore GST compensation fund that was proposed to be created by levying cess on demerit or sin goods and luxury items. This constitutes a new challenge to the rollout and timeline for the biggest indirect tax reform and the council also suggested that April 1 target to roll out the new tax regime is a distant possibility.

At the meeting, coastal states insisted for rights to levy GST on trade of goods within 12 nautical miles offshore, holding up finalising of the draft law for levy of Integrated-GST (IGST) on inter-state trade. The coastal states want the number of items that would attract cess to be increased as states would need higher compensation due to adverse effect of demonetisation on their tax collections.

At the first day of meeting, the council did not even discuss the most vexed issue of dual-control which had been till now holding up roll out of Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime. Therefore, GST council headed by the finance minister Arun Jaitley will continue discussion at the second day of the meeting to hammer out an agreement on issues of dual control to divide assessing powers between the Centre and the states. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has pointed out that September 16 is the last deadline as the current indirect tax structure will cease to exist and it is a constitutional compulsion to roll out the GST before that. 

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