The government is celebrating July 1 as ‘GST Day.’ On the completion of one year of the rolling out of the Goods and Services Tax plan, the government celebrated GST Day today at the Ambedkar International Centre to mark the first anniversary of the launch of the new indirect taxation regime.
Goods and Services Tax was launched on the midnight on June 30 last year by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the then President Pranab Mukherjee. It was aimed at bringing all taxes into a single window along the lines of the ‘One Nation – One Tax – One Market’ goal.
Congratulating the country on one year of GST, PM Modi on Twitter said, “A vibrant example of cooperative federalism and a ‘Team India’ spirit, GST has brought a positive change in the Indian economy.”
“Today marks 1st anniversary of monumental economic reform. We had complicated, clumsy tax systems. Each state required a separate return. India had a fragmented market and it needed this system,” Arun Jaitley said. “I am confident that the best implementation of GST is yet to come”, he added.
Narendra Modi had a veritable reply to his opposition party members’ condemnation of the tax.“It would have been very simple to have just one slab but it would have meant we could not have food items at zero per cent tax rate. Can we have milk and Mercedes at the same rate?”
“So, when our friends in Congress say that they will have just one GST rate, they are effectively saying they will tax food items and commodities, which are currently at zero or 5 per cent, at 18 per cent,” he said in an interview to ‘Swarajya’ magazine.
Meanwhile, former finance minister and Congress leader Chidambaram on Sunday slammed the government over its “flawed implementation” of Goods and Service Tax and added that the policy was thrust upon an “unprepared nation.” The unified tax system completes a year today since its implementation. Addressing a press conference on the one year of GST, Chidambaram said, “The design, structure, infrastructure backbone, rates and implementation of GST were so flawed that it has become a bad word among business persons, traders and common citizens.”
Chidambaram termed GST as “RSS tax” that had led to an increase in tax burden and become a “bad word” among the people. Adding that the policy has had no positive impact on the economic growth of the country, he said, “Thanks to GST and Demonetisation, industrialised states have lost a crore of jobs. The only section that appears to be happy about the GST is the tax administration that has acquired extraordinary powers that frighten the average business person and the common citizen. It is widely perceived that GST has increased the tax burden of the common citizen; it has certainly not reduced the tax burden as was promised,” Chidambaram said.
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Ahmed Patel also inserted his opinion about the single tax reform.
Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala also hit out at the government over the various tax slabs, saying “A ‘Single Tax GST’, as promised, remains a ‘pipe dream’” “#GST completes 1 Year at 12’O Clock tonight, it remains ‘Grossly Scary Tax’ for millions of traders, shopkeepers & businessmen. No wonder #GST’s more popular description is ‘Gabbar Singh Tax’ then ‘Genuine & Simple Tax’ that it was meant to be,” he wrote on Twitter.
The ministry has claimed that under GST, every minute detail of every item sold is being digitally uploaded in a central tax database for over eight million Indian businesses. However, the opposition has termed such statements as tall claims in the past and has been critical of the taxation reform.
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Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry has also acknowledged certain challenges that Goods and services tax will pose, despite its “multiplier effect” on the economy. “A change as comprehensive as GST is bound to pose certain challenges not only for the government but also for the business community, tax administration and even common citizens of the country,” the ministry said.