Bengaluru: Former PM H.D. Deve Gowda shot off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday demanding that the Centre empower state governments to administer the Goods and Service Tax (GST) as against the Central Excise department taking over all responsibilities of the state government’s Commercial Tax department.
In a letter to Mr Modi, Mr Gowda said, “The Prime Minister needs to foster the principles of true federalism and bolster fiscal autonomy of each state in the country. Therefore, the Union government must desist from entrusting complete responsibility of GST to the Central Excise Department (CED).
“This move will certainly cause a colossal loss of revenue due inherent weakness of the CED in terms of insufficient and inexperienced manpower, lack of e-logistics, and lack of knowledge of local language. This has been proved beyond doubt during the 10-year Service Tax regime, which is still struggling to achieve its full potential.”
According to him, the Commercial Tax departments in states have enough experience and have not only been administering goods but also services. “These departments are efficient in terms of their geography, language and pecuniary coverage of the assesses.
As a result of this, entrusting a larger role to Commercial Tax department in states is the only way to protect the expanding avenues of revenue which is badly needed for state welfare and infrastructural norms,” the former PM said.
