Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia has expressed hope of smooth transition to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime and said that it will make domestic companies more competitive apart from streamlining the taxation for all business activities. He also said that unlike in other countries, the transition to the new tax regime would be smooth in India because there are multiple points of taxation. Hence, the possibility of sudden spurt in inflation is remote.
Explaining the importance of GST for promotion of manufacturing in the country, Adhia said that cascading of taxes along with non-availability of input credit meant that domestically produced goods found it harder to compete with imported ones. He also said that the new tax regime is a multi-point tax on value addition with seamless input tax credit.
Meanwhile, eight state Assemblies have passed the State GST (SGST) Bill during April-May period, as the Centre gears up to roll out the new indirect tax regime from July. The GST Council, headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, had approved the model SGST Bill at its 12th Meeting on March 16 this year. The next GST Council meeting will be held on May 18-19 to fix the tax rates of various commodities.