Kolkata: The Goods and Services Tax, the new tax regime, would have four slabs and they are likely to be unveiled within 15 days, Chairman of Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers Asim Dasgupta said on Sunday.
"It (GST) will have four slabs. I hope the rates will be released in the next 15 days," Dasgupta told on Sunday.
Among the GST tax slabs, it would be zero for exempted items, one standard rate for majority of the goods and services and another having a moderate rate, he said.
Precious metals are likely to continue to attract one percent. This has to be done to bring uniformity in tax compliance for the business community and to facilitate them to maintain only a single book of accounts for both state GST and Central GST tax payment, Dasgupta said.
The implementation of GST is scheduled for April 1, 2010. However, there are doubts at various quarters whether the new tax regime would come into effect at the targeted date because differences of opinion over the rates among states and the items to be included under GST.
The Empowered Committee of state finance ministers had released a discussion paper on GST on November 10. It proposes to replace central levies like excise duty, service tax, special additional duty, countervailing duty by GST.
State levies like VAT, sales tax, entry tax etc would
also be subsumed. Besides all this, central and state cesses
and surcharges would be out once GST comes into effect.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had last month said
that "proposed GST would help achieve common market for goods
and services at lower tax rates, avoiding cascading effect of
these taxes".
Dasgupta said once the Law Ministry cleared the draft
amendments required for the GST, it would be placed before
Parliament for approval.
The legislation would empower the state to levy taxes,
but care should be taken that it was uniform, he said.
Dasgupta had earlier said all forms like C form would be
done way from day one of GST roll out, but way bill would
continue for the first year to allow the IT infrastructure for
inter-state goods and services transfer to be in place.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, December 13, 2009, 15:47