Odisha becomes 16th state to ratify GST, Bill ready for presidential nod

New Delhi: With the Odisha assembly approving the Constitutional Amendment Bill for GST Thursday, the requirement of 50 percent of states and UTs ratifying it has been completed.

The bill will now be placed before President Pranab Mukherjee for approval.

Odisha became the 16th state to pass the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Bill today.

"With Odisha ratifying the Constitutional Amendment bill for GST, minimum requirement of 50 percent states ratifying the bill is complete," said Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia in a tweet.

Dubbed as the biggest tax reform in India, GST will subsume most indirect taxes, like excise duty, service tax and VAT.

Adhia further said the ratification of the bill has been completed ahead of the schedule.

"Glad to inform that we are ahead of our schedule for implementation of GST so far. Instead of 30 days kept for this it is achieved in 23 days," he said in another tweet.

The Constitutional Amendment Bill for GST was passed by Parliament on August 8.

The government is planning to roll out the indirect tax regime from April 1. While the Centre has to draft the CGST and IGST laws, the states will have to come up with an SGST law.

But before supporting legislations go to Parliament in November, the state finance ministers have to agree on a GST rate, tax slabs and exempted goods and services.

GST rate will have to be approved by the GST Council, comprising the Union Finance Minister and representatives of all the 31 states and UTs.

Assam was the first state to ratify the GST Bill. Other states that have approved the bill are Maharashtra, Haryana, Bihar, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, and Nagaland.