Risk of cutting it too fine on GST, says Jaitley

The government is in the process of creating history by bringing about the most important indirect tax reform — the Goods and Services Tax (GST) — Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday even as he acknowledged the risk of “cutting it too fine”.

“The government is going to make every effort to ensure that there is no delay and we meet the deadline (on GST)," Jaitley told a press conference to mark completion of one year of Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government.

The government has set the deadline of April 1, 2016, to roll out GST. It was also able to get the Bill passed in the Lok Sabha in the Budget session but the opposition, which has a majority in the Rajya Sabha, forced the government to send the GST bill to a parliamentary panel for further scrutiny, thus blocking its final passage at least till the Monsoon session likely in July.

Jaitley said, barring Tamil Nadu, all other states were on board, and hoped that the government would not face much opposition on the most important indirect tax reform in India since independence. He said that the government had also taken measures to bring direct taxation rates to globally competitive levels.