Indirect tax collection increases by 11.9% post-GST : Jaitley

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : Government of India celebrated the 1^st GST Day here on July 1, 2018. The event saw an address on the eventful 1^st year journey of GST over a live video link by Union Minister Arun Jaitley. Union Minister for Railways, Coal, Finance & Corporate Affairs, Piyush Goyal presided over as the Chief Guest of the event and Minister of State for Finance Shiv Pratap Shukla was the Guest of Honour.

Addressing the distinguished gathering via video link, Jaitley recalled the pre-GST taxation system in India was one of the most complicated tax systems in the world. Multiple taxes, multiple returns to be filed by assesees, interface with multiple tax authorities, cascading effect of taxes, rising inflation, no free flow of goods across the country, fragmented markets across the country, inter alia, were some of the tenuous issues plaguing the indirect taxation system in India. GST has persuaded people to do businesses in a transparent manner without evading taxes, Jaitley added, according to aPIB release.

Jaitley said that GST had an unequivocal support of the Prime Minister of India, hence the Union Government could work closely with the States in a coordinated and collaborative fashion to make GST a success. “We analysed reasons why past Governments could not implement the GST. We resolved all issues raised by the States and assured them the immunity from fall in their revenue collection. The GST Council is India’s first consensus based federal decision making body,” he said.

Listing out the remarkable successes that the GST has achieved in a short span of 1 year, Jaitley said that this reform has created a unified market, the cascading of taxes has been eliminated, the weighted average of total taxation basket has come down, the GST Council is working upon continuous rationalisation of tax slabs, advance direct tax payments increased as result of successful implementation of GST, among others.

Jaitley informed that the total indirect tax collection for 9 month period in previous financial year post implementation of GST is about Rs 8.2 lakh crore, which if extrapolated for the whole year comes to about Rs 11 lakh crores, an 11.9% increase in indirect tax collections.

Talking about the capacity to rationalise present GST slabs, Jaitley said that the GST Council is constantly working in that direction and the desired rationalisation will come with the setting in of the stability of GST system, increasing tax collections through curbing tax evasion and increasing the tax net. The Minister said that according to his projection, an increase of 1.5% in indirect tax collections is expected in the Non oil category, which will facilitate the automatic rationalisation of tax slabs in near future.

Jaitley thanked the Finance Ministers and officers of different States without whose cooperation GST could not have been a success that it is today.

Goyal congratulated all stakeholders including State leaderships involving different political parties, officers, trade and industry, who have strived hard in making GST a success. “GST is a symbol of cooperative and collaborative federalism, and GST day is a day of 1.25 billion Indians, it is a cause for celebration,” Goyal said.