Kolkata: Union finance minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday said there is a broad consensus over the Goods and Service Tax ( GST) proposal, with Tamil Nadu being the only state to express some reservations.
After attending a meeting of the empowered committee of finance ministers in the city, Mr Jaitley said, “Every state has given its opinion and virtually all of them have supported the idea of GST. Tamil Nadu has some reservations. They have offered some suggestions that we have noted down.”
Read: Arun Jaitley shoots down Congress party's demand to cap GST
The meeting of the empowered committee was chaired by West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra. Mr Jaitley turned down the Congress demand to write a cap for the proposed GST into the Constitution. He claimed that the empowered committee has reached a consensus on having no such constitutional cap.
“The quantum of taxation is fixed by the GST committee and it is best to leave it to the committee’s discretion,” he added. The Congress, the original author of the tax reform, had said it would back the Bill if the government agreed to cap the tax rate at 18 per cent and create an independent mechanism to resolve disputes on revenue-sharing between states.
