Union Minister Arun Jaitley said on Sunday that the best of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is yet to come. The Government is celebrating July 1 as GST Day as it was on this day last year that India ushered in its biggest indirect tax reform since independence.

GST subsumed 17 indirect taxes and 23 cesses from both the Centre and States. Now, the new system prescribes one rate for all goods or services throughout the country, making the nation a unified market.

“I’m confident that the best of GST in terms of its contribution to society is yet to come,” Jaitley said, while addressing GST Day Celebrations here through a video conference.

Jaitley had earlier called GST a ‘disruptor.’ However, his thinking has changed now. He said that he had seen experiences of countries all over the world where GST caused a major disruption. “I myself used to use the word disruptive when it came to major reform like GST because it takes time to settle down. But after one year I’m not too sure whether I can use the word disruptive for GST reform,” Jaitley said, adding that the smooth manner of the changeover is almost unprecedented anywhere globally. Listing out the remarkable successes that GST has achieved in a short span of one year, he said that the reform has created a unified market, cascading of taxes has been eliminated and the weighted average of the total taxation basket has come down.

The GST Council is working on continuous rationalisation of tax slabs, and advance direct tax payments have increased as a result of successful implementation of GST, he added.

Better collection expected

He said the total indirect tax collection for the 9-month period in the previous financial year after implementation of GST is about ₹8.2 lakh crore, which, if extrapolated for the whole year, comes to about ₹11 lakh crore, an 11.9 per cent increase in indirect tax collections.

Meanwhile, the Government announced on Sunday that GST collection in June stood at ₹95,610 crore. This is slightly higher than the ₹94,016 crore for May but lower than the ₹1.03 lakh crore of April.

Speaking on the occasion, Interim Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said that this reform has put an end to illegal activities like tax evasion by simplifying the tax administration and bringing a transformation in the culture among trade and industry in the country towards faithful payment of indirect taxes.

He also said that the government is proposing to bring in an amendment during the Monsoon Session to hike the turnover threshold to ₹1.5 crore under the composition scheme. At present the limit is ₹1 crore and traders or manufacturers who opt for this scheme just need to pay GST at the rate of 1 per cent but without input tax credit.

Goyal also asked the Finance Secretary to explore whether composition assessees can be allowed to file returns on an annual basis. Present norms prescribe filing of returns by such entities on a quarterly basis.

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