Goods and Services Tax Bill
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Second Amendment) Bill, 2014 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Parliament of India | |
| An Act further to amend the Constitution of India. | |
| Territorial extent | India |
| Enacted by | Lok Sabha |
| Date passed | 8 August 2016 |
| Enacted by | Rajya Sabha |
| Date passed | 3 August 2016 |
| Legislative history | |
| Billintroduced in the Lok Sabha | The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Second Amendment) Bill, 2014 |
| Bill citation | Bill No. 192 of 2014 |
| Bill published on | 19 December 2014 |
| Introduced by | Arun Jaitley |
| Committee report | Report of the Select Committee |
| Status: Not yet in force | |
The Goods and Services Tax Bill or GST Bill, officially known as The Constitution (One Hundred and Twenty-Second Amendment) Bill, 2014, proposes a national Value added Tax to be implemented in India[1] from 1 April 2017.[2][3]
"Goods and Services Tax" would be a comprehensive indirect tax on manufacture, sale and consumption of goods and services throughout India, to replace taxes levied by the central and state governments. Goods and Services Tax would be levied and collected at each stage of sale or purchase of goods or services based on the input tax credit method. This method allows GST-registered businesses to claim tax credit to the value of GST they paid on purchase of goods or services as part of their normal commercial activity. Taxable goods and services are not distinguished from one another and are taxed at a single rate in a supply chain till the goods or services reach the consumer. Administrative responsibility would generally rest with a single authority to levy tax on goods and services.[4] Exports would be zero-rated and imports would be levied the same taxes as domestic goods and services adhering to the destination principle.
The introduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) would be a significant step in the reform of indirect taxation in India. Amalgamating several Central and State taxes into a single tax would mitigate cascading or double taxation, facilitating a common national market. The simplicity of the tax should lead to easier administration and enforcement. From the consumer point of view, the biggest advantage would be in terms of a reduction in the overall tax burden on goods, which is currently estimated at 25%-30%,[5]free movement of goods from one state to another without stopping at state borders for hours for payment of state tax or entry tax and reduction in paperwork to a large extent.
What changes there would be if India launches GST- “The tax rate under GST may be nominal or zero rated for the time being. It has been proposed to insulate the revenues of the States from the impact of GST, with the expectation that in due course, GST will be levied on petroleum and petroleum products.” The central government has assured states of compensation for any revenue losses incurred by them from the date of introduction of GST for a period of five years. [6]
As India is a federal republic GST would be implemented concurrently by the central government and by state governments.[7]
Contents
[hide]History[edit]
An empowered committee was set up by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 2000 to streamline The GST model to be adopted and to develop the required backend infrastructure that would be needed for its implementation.[8][9]
In his budget speech on 28 February 2006, P. Chidambaram, the then Finance Minister, announced the target date for implementation of GST to be 1 April 2010 and formed another empowered committee of State Finance Ministers to design the roadmap. The committee submitted its report to the government in April 2008 and released its First Discussion Paper on GST in India in 2009.[8]
The Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill, 2014 was introduced in the Lok Sabha by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on 19 December 2014, and passed by the House on 6 May 2015. In the Rajya Sabha, the bill was referred to a Select Committee on 14 May 2015. The Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha submitted its report on the bill on 22 July 2015. The bill was passed by the Rajya Sabha on 3 August 2016, and the amended bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on 8 August 2016.[10]
Ratification[edit]
The Act was passed in accordance with the provisions of Article 368 of the Constitution, and must be ratified by more than half of the State Legislatures, as required under Clause (2) of the said article. On 12 August 2016, Assam became the first state to ratify the bill, when the Assam Legislative Assembly unanimously approved it.[11][12] State Legislatures that ratified the amendment are listed below:
- Assam (12 August)
- Bihar (16 August)[13][14]
- Jharkhand (17 August)[15]
- Himachal Pradesh (22 August)[16]
- Chhattisgarh (22 August)[17]
- Gujarat (23 August)[18]
- Madhya Pradesh (24 August)[19]
- Delhi (24 August)[20]
- Nagaland (26 August)[21]
- Maharashtra (29 August)[22]
- Haryana (29 August)[23]
- Telangana (30 August)[24]
- Sikkim (30 August)[25]
- Mizoram (30 August)[26]
- Goa (31 August)[27]
Salient features of Goods and Service Tax, bill [28][edit]
The salient features about this legislation were first time discussed in its first discussion paper in year 2009. We will reproduce the features discussed here again to understand this act very well.
(i) The GST shall have two components: one levied by the Center (hereinafter referred to as Central GST), and the other levied by the States (hereinafter referred to as State GST). Rates for Central GST and State GST would be prescribed appropriately, reflecting revenue considerations and acceptability. This dual GST model would be implemented through multiple statutes (one for CGST and SGST statute for every State).
However, the basic features of law such as chargeability, definition of taxable event and taxable person, measure of levy including valuation provisions, basis of classification etc. would be uniform across these statutes as far as practicable.
(ii) The Central GST and the State GST would be applicable to all transactions of goods and services made for a consideration except the exempted goods and services, goods which are outside the purview of GST and the transactions which are below the prescribed threshold limits.
(iii) The Central GST and State GST are to be paid to the accounts of the Centre and the States separately. It would have to be ensured that account-heads for all services and goods would have indication whether it relates to Central GST or State GST (with identification of the State to whom the tax is to be credited).
(iv) Since the Central GST and State GST are to be treated separately, taxes paid against the Central GST shall be allowed to be taken as input tax credit (ITC) for the Central GST and could be utilized only against the payment of Central GST.
(v) Cross utilization of ITC between the Central GST and the State GST would not be allowed except in the case of inter-State supply of goods and services under the IGST model which is explained later.
(vi) Ideally, the problem related to credit accumulation on account of refund of GST should be avoided by both the Centre and the States except in the cases such as exports, purchase of capital goods, input tax at higher rate than output tax etc. where, again refund/adjustment should be completed in a time bound manner.
(vii) To the extent feasible, uniform procedure for collection of both Central GST and State GST would be prescribed in the respective legislation for Central GST and State GST.
(viii) The administration of the Central GST to the Centre and for State GST to the States would be given. This would imply that the Center and the States would have concurrent jurisdiction for the entire value chain and for all taxpayers on the basis of thresholds for goods and services prescribed for the States and the Centre.
(ix) The present threshold prescribed in different State VAT Acts below which VAT is not applicable varies from State to State. A uniform State GST threshold across States is desirable and, therefore, it is considered that a threshold of gross annual turnover of Rs.10 lakh both for goods and services for all the States and Union Territories may be adopted with adequate compensation for the States (particularly, the States in North-Eastern Region and Special Category States) where lower threshold had prevailed in the VAT regime. Keeping in view the interest of small traders and small scale industries and to avoid dual control, the States also considered that the threshold for Central GST for goods may be kept at Rs.1.5 crore and the threshold for Central GST for services may also be appropriately high. It may be mentioned that even now there is a separate threshold of services (Rs. 10 lakh) and goods (Rs. 1.5 crore) in the Service Tax and CENVAT.
(x) The States are also of the view that Composition/Compounding Scheme for the purpose of GST should have an upper ceiling on gross annual turnover and a floor tax rate with respect to gross annual turnover. In particular, there would be a compounding cut-off at Rs. 50 lakh of gross annual turn over and a floor rate of 0.5% across the States. The scheme would also allow option for GST registration for dealers with turnover below the compounding cut-off.
(xi) The taxpayer would need to submit periodical returns, in common format as far as possible, to both the Central GST authority and to the concerned State GST authorities.
(xii) Each taxpayer would be allotted a PAN-linked taxpayer identification number with a total of 13/15 digits. This would bring the GST PAN-linked system in line with the prevailing PAN-based system for Income tax, facilitating data exchange and taxpayer compliance.
(xiii) Keeping in mind the need of tax payer’s convenience, functions such as assessment, enforcement, scrutiny and audit would be undertaken by the authority which is collecting the tax, with information sharing between the Centre and the States.
National proposals[edit]
A proposal to introduce a national-level Goods and Services Tax (GST) by April 1, 2010 was first mooted in the Budget Speech for the financial year 2006-07. Since the proposal involved reform/ restructuring of not only indirect taxes levied by the Center but also the States, the responsibility of preparing a Design and Road Map for the implementation of GST was assigned to the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers (EC). In April, 2008, the EC submitted a report, titled "A Model and Road map for Goods and Services Tax (GST) in India" containing broad recommendations about the structure and design of GST. In response to the report, the Department of Revenue made some suggestions to be incorporated in the design and structure of proposed GST bill . Based on inputs from GoI and States, The EC released its First Discussion Paper on Goods and Services Tax in India on the 10th of November, 2009 with the objective of generating a debate and obtaining inputs from all stakeholders.
A dual GST module for the country has been proposed by the EC. This dual GST model has been accepted by centre. Under this model GST have two components viz. the Central GST to be levied and collected by the Centre and the State GST to be levied and collected by the respective States. Central Excise duty, additional excise duty, Service Tax, and additional duty of customs (equivalent to excise), State VAT, entertainment tax, taxes on lotteries, betting and gambling and entry tax (not levied by local bodies) would be subsumed within GST. Other taxes which will be subsumed with GST are Octroi, entry tax and luxury tax thus making it a single indirect tax in India.[29]
In order to take the GST related work further, a Joint Working Group consisting of officers from Central as well as State Government was constituted. This was further trifurcated into three Sub-Working Groups to work separately on draft legislations required for GST, process/forms to be followed in GST regime and IT infrastructure development needed for smooth functioning of proposed GST. In addition, an Empowered Group for development of IT Systems required for Goods and Services Tax regime has been set up under the chairmanship of Dr. Nandan Nilekani.Amendment
Parliamentary motions[edit]
A draft of the Constitutional Amendment Bill has been prepared and has been sent to the EC for obtaining views of the State GST, has its salient features for taxes made on goods.
The Goods and Service Tax Bill or GST Bill, officially known as "The Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill, 2014", would be a Value added Tax (VAT) to be implemented in India, from April 2017.[30] GST stands for "Goods and Services Tax", and is proposed to be a comprehensive indirect tax levy on manufacture, sale and consumption of goods as well as services at the national level. It will replace all indirect taxes levied on goods and services by the Indian Central and State governments. It is aimed at being comprehensive for most goods and services.[31][32]
The GST was passed in Rajya Sabha on August 3, 2016 by a full majority. AIADMK staged a walk out in protest of the GST Bill during the voting period. The GST Bill has been approved by the Lok Sabha on 8 August 2016. The Government believes that this will boost the nation’s economy and bring fresh investments. The bill was ratified by 14 states in one month after it was passed in the Parliament. Under the GST regime, the goods will be taxed at the consumption rate, avoiding multiple taxations on different rates. It is also believed that the new system will also generate Government revenues in a better way. However, the losses experienced by the manufacturing states will be compensated by the central government.
Model Draft GST Law [33][edit]
The draft GST law proposed in the parliament indicates all the entities that lie under the GST Bill. The GST bill comes directly under the Central government and there are certain procedure that are meant to provide feasible condition for the taxpayer. The power to grant exemption from the tax between the states and the central government is well explained in the draft bill. The Central Goods and Services tax grants power to the officers to discharge their duties under the GST Act.
Tax-Rate under the proposed GST[edit]
The tax-rate under the proposed GST would fall, but the number of assesses would increase by 5-6 times.[34] Although rates would come down, tax collection would go up due to increased tax elasticity. The government is working on a special IT platform for smooth implementation of the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST). The IT special vehicle (SPV) christened as GST N (Network) will be owned by three stakeholders—the centre, the states and the technology partner NSDL, then Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) Chairman S Dutt Majumdar said while addressing a "National Conference on GST". On the possibility of rolling out GST, he said, "There was no need for alarm if GST was not rolled out in April 1, 2012.[32]
Renewed GST concerns[edit]
With heterogeneous State laws on VAT, the debate on the necessity for a GST has been reignited[35][citation needed]. The best GST systems across the world use a single GST, while India has opted for a dual-GST model. Critics claim that CGST, SGST and IGST are nothing but new names for Central Excise/Service Tax, VAT and CST, and hence GST brings nothing new to the table. The concept of value-added has never been utilized in the levy of service, as the Delhi High Court is attempting to prove in the case of Home Solution Retail, while under Central Excise the focus is on defining and refining the definition of manufacture, instead of focusing on value additions. The Revenue can be very stubborn when it comes to refunds, as the Maharashtra Government proves, and software entities that applied for refunds on excess service tax paid on inputs discovered[citation needed].[32]
The all-new Cenvat Credit Rules, 2014 do little to clarify eligibility for input credits, by using general terms such as "any goods which have no relationship whatsoever with the manufacture of a final product" and "services used primarily for personal use or consumption of any employee"[citation needed].[36]