Chennai: Though a consensus on GST implementation eluded the fifth meeting of the council on Saturday, Tamil Nadu's insistence for change in the GST Act has resulted in changes in two drafts including the state compensation law. They would be beneficial to the state which could obtain compensation amount.
State minister for school education K. Pandiarajan, who attended the meeting, told reporters that detailed discussions were held on four drafts. The state governments are together in most of the views and a consensus can be found if the Centre consents to the views of states, he said.
Problems persisted in finding a consensus at the meeting presided over by Union finance minister Jaitley and there were intense debates on four drafts.
No decision had been made on how to impose taxes on goods moving from state to state, he said and added key questions like who would levy the tax and the rate of taxation remained unresolved.
Previously, the state governments were allowed to levy tax on eight to 10 goods manufactured in the state, but this was changed by the previous UPA government, with the support of the DMK, Pandiarajan said.
Talking to the media yesterday, Pandiarajan had said “Unless cross empowerment dual control issue is cleared, there is no point in going through the model laws especially relating to Integrated Goods and Service Tax (IGST) because what is fundamental is that most states are of viewing that IGST as has been conceived as of now there should be no different between GST and IGST because both we want a threshold, both we want compounding, both we want a cut off of Rs 1.5 crore above which we could have cross empowerment, below which the states have to manage”
He also revealed that there is a clear agreement that all the three dominant taxes will get subsumed; excise, service tax and your Value Added Tax (VAT) sales tax per se.
