The Government intends to bring a Constitutional Amendment Bill for the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the next session of Parliament.

“There is a reasonable expectation and optimism on our part that we will be able to resolve issues such as inclusion of petroleum, alcohol, and entry tax in the GST. If we succeed, then we will be in a position to introduce the legislation in the Winter Session,” said Revenue Secretary Shaktikanta Das.

In his Budget speech on Thursday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said he hoped to find solutions to issues dogging the GST in the current fiscal year.

Speaking to BusinessLine Das said that this confidence emerges from the fact that discussions have started on issues where there was no convergence between States earlier.

The States had also given some suggestions on a compensation mechanism in the GST and the Government is looking into them, he said.

No firm timeline Das, however, refused to get drawn into setting a clear timeframe for the rollout of the Goods and Services tax. “I would not like to give a timeline. The Finance Minister said that it will be during this year, so we will definitely do it before March 31, 2015,” he said.

“Our efforts will be to do it at the earliest, so that it can be rolled out from 2015 onwards. Giving a date for introduction of GST has no meaning. We do not want to bind ourselves to any date,” he added.

Once Parliament gives its approval to the legislation, it will require approval by at least half the State Assemblies before the provisions in the Bill can be implemented.

The Bill aims to empower both Parliament and State Legislatures, including of Union Territories, to make laws to levy GST on every transaction involving supply of goods or services or both. Currently, only the Centre has the power to levy service tax.

Gold duty Talking about the rationale behind not reducing the import duty on gold, Das said this was done keeping the current account deficit (CAD) in mind.

“Measures to tighten gold imports by increasing the duty and putting other restrictions were introduced in the context of controlling the CAD. Yes, we are out of the problem, but we cannot assume everything is all right and go to the other extreme. We need to tread carefully and cautiously,” he said.

These measures were taken after the CAD touched $88 billion (4.7 per cent of GDP) at the end of fiscal year 2012-13. The deficit came down to $32.40 billion (1.7 per cent of GDP) in 2013-14.

Das said he could not understand why the markets had expected a reduction since the Securities Transaction Tax and Commodities Transaction Tax were anyway low.

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