Arun Jaitley looks to end deadlock at GST meeting tomorrow

New Delhi: In order to ensure smooth passage of GST, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday will look forward to breaking the deadlock over power distribution between centre and states.

Administration of GST is an issue that is holding up launch of the new tax rate between centre and states for long now.

The all-powerful GST Council, headed by Jaitley, will meet for the ninth time tomorrow with the issue of who gets to administer the Goods and Services Tax (GST) being the single biggest issue on agenda.

The council has been deadlocked in the last four meetings, the last one being on January 4, with states seeking sole powers to control assessee with annual turnover of up to Rs 1.5 crore.

Centre, however, is not in favour of a horizontal split as it feels states do not have the expertise to administer levies like service tax.

Jaitley is also not favour of dual agencies auditing and scrutinising each taxpayer as he reckons multiple authorities could end up acting at cross-purposes.

Jaitley had last week hoped to resolve the pending issues to get the new indirect tax regime rolling from April 1.

"Most of the issues have been sorted out, some critical issues remain and these critical issues over the next few weeks we will try and solve out," he said last week. "We would want it to be implemented from April if all issues are resolved."

The GST Council is also to discuss the taxation of trade in territorial waters. Also the corpus to be created for compensating states for loss of revenue from GST rollout may figure in tomorrow's meeting, sources said.

With PTI Inputs