GST: An imperfect mockery, says Chidambaram

How is the GST ( Goods & Services Tax) ‘one nation-one-tax’ when the Government has proposed as many as seven rates? Describing the GST as imperfect and a mockery, Congress leader and former Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Thursday listed several imperfections in the GST roll-out.

He told media persons that former Union Finance Minister in the NDA government Yashwant Sinha too had confirmed that this is not the GST that the first NDA Government had then envisaged.

The former Union Finance Minister listed the following imperfections :

• While the GST ideally visualised one indirect tax to subsume all other indirect taxes, in effect it has not done so
• By allowing state governments to levy taxes over and above the GST, the Centre has added to the confusion and diluted GST
• By leaving out Real Estate, Petroleum products and Electricity from GST, the Government seems to have favoured lobbies
• By not putting the GST Network ( GSTN) through a trial run, the Centre has compounded teething troubles
• The cap should have been put at 18 per cent and not 28 per cent
• GST could have been delayed by two months
• Both government agencies and businesses seem unprepared or ‘under prepared’ for the roll-out

Chidambaram said that the Congress would keep a watch on the roll-out and highlight the grievances of the trading and business classes as well as consumers with the GST.