By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Ahead of the Monsoon Session, the Congress demanded a discussion in the Parliament and an all party meeting on GST, saying there is a need to completely overhaul the present GST, as taxation regime completes five years.
Congress said that the GST laws and the manner of their implementation have wrecked the economy.“The GST had serious birth defects. In the last five years these defects have only become worse and all those touched by GST have been seriously injured,” said senior party leader P Chidambaram.
The party said that a flawed GST has led to large-scale destruction of MSMEs, a sector that contributes up to 90 per cent of the jobs in the manufacturing sector. “The worst consequence of the GST brought in by the government has been a complete breakdown of trust between the Centre and states, he said.
As far as the Congress Party is concerned, we reject the current GST and, as promised in the Election Manifesto of 2019, we will work toward the replacement of the current GST by GST 2.0 that will be single, low-rate,” he said.
Calling for an all party meeting to fix the issues in the tax regime, senior party leader Jairam Ramesh said there is need to completely overhaul it and the party will demand a discussion in upcoming monsoon session.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took to twitter to say that the BJP has turned the Congress’ ‘Genuine Simple Tax’ into a ‘Gabbar Singh Tax’, making the GST a “nightmare” for doing business in India.Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh also demanded that there is a need for review of the GST applicable on medium, small and micro enterprises (MSMEs).
Demands of States
Many states have been pushing for extension of compensation mechanism for revenue lost from the implementation of GST regime for another five years after the deadline ended June 30
As an alternative, some states want the share of States in the GST revenues increased from current 50% to 70-80%
Several states have flagged the issue of pending GST compensation dues and asked them to be settled at the earliest
New items on GST list: Prepackaged and pre-labelled retail pack of curd, paneer, honey, lassi, butter milk, fish & meat, certain vegetables, barley, oats, maize, millets, cornflour and jiggery
