In the ninth meeting of all powerful GST Council, headed by Jaitley, the Centre and states will look at a formula to sort out the row over levying goods and services tax on the high seas by letting the government collect the tax and pass it on to the states. The Centre's proposal to tax transactions that take place within 12 nautical miles from state borders has been opposed by several states, including BJP-ruled Gujarat and Maharashtra as well as Kerala, Karnataka and Odisha, which stand to lose substantial revenue.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that 'most of the issues have been sorted out, some critical issues remain and these critical issues over the next few weeks we will try and solve out'. 'We would want it to be implemented from April if all issues are resolved.' According to Jaitley, GST needs to be rolled out latest by September 16, 2017.
Jaitley will also look to break the deadlock over distribution of powers between centre and states to administer GST, an issue that is holding up launch of the new national sales tax from April. The council has been deadlocked in the last four meetings, with states seeking sole powers to control assessee with annual turnover of up to Rs 1.5 crore.
The council had in previous meeting agreed on most of the clauses of the draft IGST law, which along with Central-GST (CGST) and State-GST (SGST) have to be passed by the Parliament and state legislatives respectively before the new tax regime can be rolled out.