Scathing remark on ‘Congress Legacy Tax’ to be a final obituary, Arun Jaitley hails success of GST in one year

NewsBharati    28-Jul-2018
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New Delhi, July 28: Hailing the success of implementation of the Goods and Service Tax, the decision has only brought in quiet appreciation from the common man with the recent slash in products giving India a reason to smile. On a similar note, emphasizing that in the past one year there has been a reduction of tax in 384 commodities with no increase on a single product, Union Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday said that India has never witnessed such mass tax reduction since Independence.

The Union Minister shared a Facebook post implicating how the Goods and Service Tax has benefitted the entire nation. Giving an insight of the previous government’s tax regime, the Union Minister stated that in the pre-GST regime, India had a complicated, inefficient, multiple Indirect tax system where each assessed could be levied up to 17 different taxes.

 

Taking a jibe at the Congress, Jaitley added, “It is only a matter of time that the final obituary of the ‘Congress Legacy Tax’ is written. Only the luxury-sin tax would remain.” 

 

The GST consolidated them to one tax. Since the passing of GST Constitutional Amendment Bill, there have been 28 meetings of the GST Council which have reviewed the GST tariffs on a continuous basis. The first one year has witnessed an encouraging trend in this direction.

The 28% category under GST is being phased out. The Union Minister further noted that the remaining item in that category where only luxury items. The other items outside the luxury-sin goods category are cement, air-conditioners, large screen televisions and a handful of others.

 

“This tax reduction has reduced the cost to the consumers, increased his purchasing capacity and added to the increased consumption in the economy. All household items stand reduced from 28% to 18% and 12%,” the minister added.

 

In his post, Arun Jaitley indicated that with further expansion of revenues, these few items may also witness a change of category. India has never witnessed such mass tax reduction since Independence, he claimed. Similarly, in the services category, he added, which has now become a part of the GST, on four different occasions 68 different categories of services have witnessed their rates reduced.

The net revenue loss which government has suffered on account of the reduction of tax on goods and services is about Rs70,000 crores. Union Minister Arun Jaitley said since state governments have been guaranteed a 14 % increase over their pre-GST revenues for the first five years, this burden has entirely been borne from the share of the Central Government.