Rolling out the GST regime certainly doable in 2016: FM

Raising some hopes of the passage of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill in the parliament, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said that rolling out the ambitious GST regime is 'certainly' doable in 2016 and he is in continuous touch with the Congress party in a bid to persuade them to cooperate.

Jaitley further said that in the next session the GST will make headway. “After all, it was a Bill brought by Congress, for political reasons, they have done a volte-face but they should not be doing it indefinitely”. He also said that the Congress did not have 'numbers to obstruct, so it used disruption in order to obstruct and “I think it is a very bad precedent for India's Parliamentary democracy if this is followed in state legislatures and if this is followed by future opposition parties, I think it would be a bad trend to set'.

He emphasized that the passage of GST remains one of his key priority areas for the New Year, along with rationalising the direct taxes and further easing of process for doing business. He added that GST was not like income tax and therefore it was not necessary to bring it in force from the beginning of a new financial year. Earlier the government had targetted to roll out GST from April 1, 2016, Jaitley said 'GST is not an income tax (measure) and it does not have to come on only on first April of every year. It is a transactional tax and so it can come even in the middle of the year'.

Earlier, the Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian too came up with a win-win model to address the issue of including petroleum products in the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST) list and said that Petrol and other petroleum products would not be brought under the GST regime for some time after its roll out.