State governments agree on GST timetable

New Delhi: The first meeting of the GST council on Thursday saw difference over what should be turnover limit for businesses to be exempted from the new tax. The Council skipped the crucial issue of GST rate. However, the Centre and states agreed on a timetable for deciding on the tax rate and completion of legislative work. There were also doubts over West Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra being appointed vice chairman of the GST Council in absence of the state app-roving the Constitution Amendment Bill. To get that chair and for any member to be eligible to vote on issues before the Council, their respective states have to clear the Constitution Amendment Bill on GST.

While some states demanded traders with turnover of '10 lakh or less be exempted, a  large number, including Delhi, were in favour of the limit being fixed at '25  lakh in a year.  With tax collected from traders being just two per cent of the total tax collection, the majority view was in favour of a higher exemption limit. The meeting will continue on Friday.  Some states including Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh demanded a larger say than one-state-one-vote principle that puts a smaller state on equal footing with a large manufacturing one. However, this demand was more or less overruled

Discussion over base year  for compensating states for loss of revenue following implementation of GST will continue on Friday. “Today, starting from September 22, we roughly have two months time till November 22 to resolve all outstanding issues and therefore a draft timetable was given which also have been adopted,” said Finance minister Arun Jaitley after the meet.

He said that the target also involves the passage of CGST and IGST law at the central Parliament and then by the state legislatures the state GST law in the winter session itself. “With regard to composition we have finalised our proposal which has been unanimously accepted by the members. With regard to threshold for exemptions, there are two sets of suggestions which have come. We have converged to those two different views and both on officers and ministers track we will continue the meeting tomorrow and thereafter so that we are able to converge to one particular figure as far as the exemptions are concerned,” Mr Jaitley said.