State Finance Ministers News

This will be the third meeting of the council since the launch of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on July 1 and the 21st since it was set up in September last year.

The meeting on June 14 and 15 will discuss the model GST law, which will be adopted by the Centre and all states.

Amid hopes of long pending GST bill getting passed in Rajya Sabha in the next Parliament session, state finance ministers will deliberate on the model GST law at a two-day meeting in Kolkata beginning Tuesday.

He will succeed Kerala Finance Minister K M Mani who had to resign in November over corruption charges.  

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who chaired on Friday's meeting, said the states were "divided" over the threshold.

The states discussed the threshold limit for levying GST and setting up a new sub-committee to collect data from states to decide on the same.

State finance ministers will meet Friday to elect the new Chairman of the Empowered Committee and also discuss the model Goods and Services (GST) Tax law as well as report on the revenue neutral rate.

Mani was appointed the Chairman of the panel in March this year.

The Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers has recommended that the RBI's core banking solution e-Kuber be used for consolidating and settlement of accounts under the GST system.

States are pressing the Centre for compensating them fully for the loss of revenue in the first five years of GST replacing their taxes.

The Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers, headed by K M Mani, will meet here Thursday to deliberate on the revenue neutral rate, besides other issues, for smooth roll out of Goods and Services Tax (GST).

The two-day meeting of the state finance ministers, which concluded here on Friday, has decided to request the Centre to depute the Empowered Committee members to visit some countries which have adopted the GST.

The passage of the Constitution Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha will ensure GST implementation by April 2016, but first it has to pass muster in the Rajya Sabha, experts said.

GST, which is proposed to be implemented from April 1, 2016, will subsume excise, service tax, state VAT, entry tax, octroi and other state levies.

A face-off between the opposition and government over the Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill is likely with the Congress and some other opposition parties insisting that it be sent to the Parliamentary Standing Committee for scrutiny.

Opposition members insisted that bill be referred to the Standing Committee on Finance as it was a new bill as opposed to the one brought by the UPA government.

Jaitley said he is optimistic about introduction of GST, which will create a nationwide unified market and remove trade barriers in the form of cascading effects of taxation, from April 1, 2016.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said the government will go ahead with GST Constitutional Amendment Bill in the ongoing session of Parliament.

State Finance Ministers on Wednesday pressed for lowering the threshold limit to Rs 10 lakh for imposing Goods and Service tax (GST) on entities and asked the Centre to specify GST compensation structure for five years in the Constitutional Amendment Bill.

State Finance Ministers will meet on Wednesday to iron out differences for early roll-out of the ambitious Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime.