Government of India celebrated the 1st GST Day. The event saw an address on the eventful 1styear journey of GST over a live video link by Union Minister, Arun Jaitley. Union Minister for Railways, Coal, Finance & Corporate Affairs, Piyush Goyal presided over as the Chief Guest of the event and Minister of State for Finance, Shiv Pratap Shukla was the Guest of Honour.
Arun Jaitley recalled the pre-GST taxation system in India was one of the most complicated tax systems in the world. Multiple taxes, multiple returns to be filed by assesees, interface with multiple tax authorities, cascading effect of taxes, rising inflation, no free flow of goods across the country, fragmented markets across the country, inter alia, were some of the tenuous issues plaguing the indirect taxation system in India. GST has persuaded people to do businesses in a transparent manner without evading taxes.
Jaitley said that GST had an unequivocal support of the Prime Minister of India, hence the Union Government could work closely with the States in a coordinated and collaborative fashion to make GST a success. “We analysed reasons why past Governments could not implement the GST. We resolved all issues raised by the States and assured them the immunity from fall in their revenue collection. The GST Council is India’s first consensus based federal decision making body”, the Minister said.
The GST Council is working upon continuous rationalisation of tax slabs, advance direct tax payments increased as result of successful implementation of GST, among others. The Minister informed that the total indirect tax collection for 9 month period in previous financial year post implementation of GST is about Rs. 8.2 lakh crores, which if extrapolated for the whole year comes to about Rs. 11 lakh crores, an 11.9% increase in indirect tax collections.
Union Minister for Railways, Coal, Finance and Corporate Affairs, Piyush Goyal congratulated all stakeholders, including State leaderships involving different political parties, officers, trade and industry, who have strived hard in making GST a success. GST is a symbol of cooperative and collaborative federalism, and GST day is a day of 1.25 billion Indians, it’s a cause for celebration. We should compliment each other for its grand success.
