GST rollout as scheduled, says Adhia

The GST roll out will not be postponed and both the States as well as the Centre will stick to the July 1 date, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said on Tuesday.

Addressing a ‘Town Hall’ meeting on GST, Adhia said, “We are anxious for a speedy rollout. There is no compromise on the date. Most of the work required for implementation of GST from July 1 has been completed.”

“Once rolled out, trade and industry will have a much lower compliance burden compared with the current regime in which they have to file different returns with different authorities for different taxes,” he added.

The Revenue Secretary said the GST when rolled out is expected to push up country’s GDP by more than 4 per cent. “This is due to the simplicity, uniformity and predictability of the new indirect tax regime, which will encourage people to be more tax complaint,” he said.

Adhia said he was not predicting the 4 per cent jump in GDP, but it was an opinion of US Federal Reserve’s economists in their paper on India.

He said, “Once we are there, then there will be scope for rationalisation of tax rates fixed on various goods and services. For at present only 19 items are under 28 per cent bracket and about 44 items under 18 per cent bracket.”

Various industries and businesses, including traders, FMCG and automobiles have been petitioning the Centre for revising rates. At the Town Hall meet, he announced that he did not rule out the scope for rationalisation of tax rates fixed on various goods and services.

Adhia dismissed fears over deposits or loans getting charged due to implementation of GST.

“All people in financial services will know, we are not charging service taxes in deposits as well as loans, but taxes on other services. Loans are not going to become costlier. That is a misplaced fear, because of lack of understanding,” he explained.

He further told the meet that on June 3, the GST Council is expected to meet to address items left out of GST taxation.

“At the council meet food processing sector issues are to be taken up like fixing rates of foodgrains, especially wheat and rice.” He further said the Council would also take a view on the definition of brands and branding of food items.

Adhia said with works contracts coming under input tax credit, homes are set to get cheaper.

“There is a provision in the GST law that, by chance, if taxes paid on the inputs are more than the tax rate of the output liability, refunds will also be given except in certain items such as work contracts.”

He explained that the total incidences of taxation on a product or service are to come down for most items.

“This will happen because of the removal of cascading of taxation, and availability of seamless flow of credit across the value chain. If goods are produced in which services are used, the input tax credit of taxes paid on services will be available and vice versa.”

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